I disagree. There's a lot of reasons why people don't have children, including:

• emotional devastated youth (abandoned by parents, addicted to smartphones, misunderstood by society)
• people can't find partners for this reason
• too much stress from too much work
• wages are barely keeping up with inflation, and I project they will in fact not keep up in the long term in the US due to missing labor protections and decreasing demand for labor.
• rising cost of living because politically, nobody really cares about the population.

edit: sorry i realized i made these points US-specific but you were talking about russia, sorry.

My wife and I both work over 40 hour weeks. We are pretty comfortable especially compared to our friends and family members and we are not even close to buying a house and don’t have time to raise a kid and still think it’s too expensive to do so.

I REALLY wish it weren't against TOS to log into my Fedia.io account, and my piefed account to upvote you 3 times.

Maybe barred windows? So many people seem to die from falling through windows there, apparently all terrible accidents

At this point they don't even need to go to Ukraine anymore, they have Ukraine at home to deal with

Nah, he needs babies for the meat grinder.

Yeah, that seems to be the point. He's again appealing to his macho fascist supporters by further enabling abusive behaviour. Domestic violence has been decriminalized for years already in Russia, violence against outgroups is allowed/encouraged, they have a national snitch on your neighbour system, ... It's become a true fascist society.

Newsflash. We’re talking about conservative Russia here. It already was :/.

Yo, you think Republicans aren't listening and taking notes? In fact they WOULD encourage sexual assaults. at work and everywhere else - gotta produce babies. It's how they roll.

Seriously! Stop sending off the young men who could be fathers to die in Ukraine. At some point Ukraine will have killed over 1 million of these people that should never have had to leave home.

He is not concerned about the population, he is concerned about not having enough young men to send off to war.

Well of coarse they don't have time to fuck.....they're all too busy filling out paperwork for all the dead bodies that keep piling up.

They're doing a great job of removing young men already...

I'd also add that I don't know if this is necessarily the best move the Kremlin could be making from a propaganda standpoint, given that this is wartime and soldiers are being sent to the front. Back during WW2, there was a substantial bit of sex-oriented propaganda that took the form of mostly-pornographic material trying to get soldiers worried that wives would be sleeping with other men back home while they were away (or sometimes with other soldiers from other allied countries). I'd wonder whether the Kremlin putting out material like this is liable to help recreate a similar psychological warfare push, just...on themselves.

Obviously, NSFW images:

https://www.psywarrior.com/sexandprop.html

I won't embed the images in this comment, but some extracts of text as an example.

A second set of six see-through cards depicts French soldiers dying of wounds, with one soldier holding a photo of a woman. The initial printing was about 400,000 of each card and they were dropped from early May to early June 1940. The see-through sexual scenes depict a soldier and a nude woman sitting on a bed; a soldier and nude woman lying on a bed; a smiling soldier and a crying woman sitting on a bed, both partially clothed; a soldier sitting on a couch with a woman on his lap; a soldier standing and nude woman sitting in a salon; and a soldier, nude girl, and angry mother standing in a room.

A third set of six German propaganda “see-through” cards for French troops were inscribed “Les mylords a l’etape” (“Gentlemen at rest ”), and depicted dead or dying French soldiers on the ground, with hidden pictures showing nude or partially nude women when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated.

A fourth set of five “Les mylords a l’etape” see-through cards depicted three French soldiers crushed under rubble and the usual scenes of French women with British soldiers when held to the light. These cards were prepared but never disseminated. A sixth card might exist but has not been found as yet.

Another “divide and conquer” leaflet depicts a British Army officer holding the breast of a semi-naked French woman while her husband is shown in a front-line trench peeping out from behind barbed wire. These leaflets were produced during the “Phony War” of 1940 in an attempt to convince the French that they were being sacrificed at the Front while the British vacationed with their women behind the lines.

The Germans produced another two sets of see-through leaflets in 1940. The first consisted of seven cards and the text "Les mylords a l’etape," ("Gentlemen at rest."). Once again, the cards show dying French troops and British soldiers with French women. A second set of five cards shows three French soldiers crushed under rubble while the British officers play with the French women.

The Germans used the same see-through propaganda once again in 1944 to divide the British from their American allies. The method was cruder. While in the earlier full-color cards they had cleverly placed one sheet on top of another to make a very clear picture when the light came through, this time they simply printed the front and the back so that when the light came through the two sides were combined. The cards were on a cheap paper sized about 4 x 6-inches. They printed four series of leaflets on a very thin paper with crude see-through images and text. They are AW33 through AW36, each we believe with additional leaflets with an added a-e. This would seem to indicate 24 leaflets in all, though we cannot be sure that the Germans used all the available codes. The leaflets of the first three series show a dead Tommy lying on his back, lying face down in barbed wire, or in the barbed wire staring wide-eyed at the viewer. The secret images show an American soldier raping a girl, fondling partially undressed women, or having sex with a nude woman on a bed. The messages are short. Examples are, “Your fight / his warfare,” “While you face death,” “Die! / to keep him living,” “Your allies are assisting you / on all fronts” and Where are your Yanks?” These leaflets were designed for Allied troops on the Western Front by the German Skorpion West propaganda organization. It is believed they were printed by the German propaganda company in Paris.

All "The Girl you Left Behind" leaflets are crude drawing in a monotone. These leaflets told the story of the mythical Sam Levy; a Jew who was growing rich and enjoying the favors of a Christian girl while her boyfriend was fighting on the front lines.

The final leaflet depicts seems to be the final one in the set. Vivian and Bill are in bed and Frank enters, cane in hand. Text on the front is:

In walked a man in a soldier’s uniform…

Text on the back is:

BILL THE CONQUEROR. "It is better to have a high-paving defense job than to be torn to piece by an enemy shell," thought home front warrior Bill Turner when he jauntily pocketed his fat paycheck. He couldn't help laughing at how he had fooled the Draft Board. Besides, he had another good reason to be in a happy mood. Lovely Vivian Hope, the girl he adored, had hinted that she might accept him, when the other day he had asked her out of a clear sky to marry him. Vivian was working in the same plant as stenographer. and she and Bill Turner had been much together for some time. But between her and Bill stood Frank Merritt to whom she had promised herself. Two years ago - it seemed ages to Vivian - Frank had been shipped overseas to face shells and bullets and perhaps die for the cause of ambitious politicians and war profiteers. For over eight months, Vivian had not heard from Frank. Could he be among the missing? So many young chaps would never return. Perhaps it was a bit reckless of her to ask Bill up to her furnished room on her twenty-fourth birthday to a dainty little dinner she prepared herself. Bill was in good form that night. He had been reading so much in the papers about reconnoitering patrols, shock action, assaulting parties and combined operations that he felt the urge to vie with the best soldier at the front. And "his war" in the seclusion of a scented bedroom was so easy to conduct compared with the hardships and constant danger of death hundreds of thousands of his countrymen were facing every day. However, even the greatest strategists sometimes overlook a trifling but decisive precautionary measure. Bill had forgotten to lock the door. Suddenly it burst open and in walked a man in a soldier's uniform. It was Frank Merritt, who badly wounded had been taken prisoner-of-war. For months, he had been lying in a hospital between life and death before being finally exchanged when his condition had improved. Frank came rushing home to surprise Vivian on her birthday - only to find all his happiness shattered to pieces by a draft dodger. have you seen the other pictures of "HOME FRONT WARRIORS"? AI-159-11-44.

Another Propaganda-Abschnitts-Offizier leaflet depicts a smiling naked British girl rolling up her stocking while a U.S. Army Staff-sergeant fixes his tie nearby. Text on the front is:

While you are away.

The back depicts a disfigured British soldier dead on the battlefield. The text is:

The Yanks are 'lend-leasing' your women. Their pockets full of cash and no work to do, the boys from overseas are having the time of their lives in Merry Old England. And what young woman, single or married, could resist such "handsome brute from the wide open spaces" to have dinner with, a cocktail at some nightclub, and afterwards.... Anyway, so numerous have become the scandals that all England is talking about them now. Most of you are convinced that the war will be over in four months. Too bad if it should hit you in the last minute.

This leaflet is actually rather clever. It mentions "Lend-lease," a program where the United States sent weapons and materiel to Great Britain to be paid for after the war. It talks about pockets full of money, which would remind the British of their saying about the Yanks, "overpaid. oversexed, and over here." Finally, the term “wide open spaces” reminds us that many Europeans believed that America was still the land where the “Cowboys and Indians” rode the open plains. The leaflet is coded AI-046-8-44.

The Government of Japan attempted many times to alienate the allied forces protecting Australia. The Japanese aimed their "Divide and conquer" tactics at the Aussie Troops fighting in New Guinea and Papua.

On one full-color anti-American leaflet, we find a slick American officer holding a young semi-exposed lady who is in the process of struggling for her freedom. We see some buttocks and cleavage. A ragged Australian soldier stands on a depiction of New Guinea. Text over him is, "Australia screams." The Aussie: "What was that scream. Something up?" Meanwhile the American officer tries to quiet his victim and says, "The Yank: "Sh..Sh..Quiet Girlie, Calm yourself. He'll be on the next casualty list. No worry."

It's possible to have sex and still not have kids......

Probably not. But have you considered one male authority figure and a cohort of female underlings?

Actually, the motto in russia is "And then it got worse"

Apparently Putin wants both.