Under President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Federation managed for a time to greatly slow the population and fertility decrease that the country experienced in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. However, things stalled out in the mid-2010s, and the escalation of the war in Ukraine has only made matters worse. This week, Josh and June take a look at Putin's attempts to engineer demographic growth in Russia over the years and discover how the war has created an insurmountable roadblock that is nevertheless changing fundamental principles of Russian society.

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EPISODE ART: Vladimir Putin, the president of the Russian Federation. First elected president in 2000, Putin will theoretically be able to serve as Russia's president until 2036 thanks to a series of rule changes and constitutional amendments.

AUDIO CLIPS:

1:17:25 – Putin's remarks at the 2026 Mother Heroine Awards

SOURCES:

Announcement of The Order of Parental Glory (Russian Kremlin, June 1, 2026)
Announcement of the Year of the Family (Russian Kremlin, January 23, 2024)
Putin's remarks from meeting with participants and winners of all-Russian family contests (Russian Kremlin, January 23, 2024)
Announcement of Executive Order on social support measures for large families (Russian Kremlin, January 23, 2024)
Total fertility rate statistics for Russia and Ukraine (The World Bank)
English-language constitution of the Russian Federation, including the 2020 amendments
Full text of Russia's demographic growth concept
Coverage of a Yakutian family winning in the 2025 Family of the Year competition (Yakutiya 24, 2025)
"Putin Honors Large Families, Links Mother Heroine Awards to Traditional Values" (APT, June 1, 2026)
"There are almost no reasons left for abortion" by Varvara Petrenko (Gazeta.ru, February 14, 2012)
"The Russian Orthodox Church and its fight against abortion: taking on the state and losing" by Pål Kolstø (Religion, State & Society, 2023, vol. 51 no. 2)
"Putin considers it necessary for families to "be born early" in Russia" (TASS, January 25, 2024)
"Russia Is in Demographic Free Fall. Putin Isn’t Helping." by Anna Nemtsova (The Atlantic, April 29, 2025)
"Russian kindergarteners, schoolchildren and students began to be massively taken to taken on excursions to registry offices" (Verstka, March 3, 2026)
VKontakte post about a school trip to a civil registry office
CDC data on births in the United States from 1999