In Russia, 2024 has been declared the “Year of the Family”, but the birth rate is at its lowest – against a backdrop of war in Ukraine in particular – and the population is aging. However, according to the reputedly serious newspaper Kommersant, who spoke about it at the end of the week, the Russian authorities are preparing to mass test the fertility of their fellow citizens.
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No obligation is currently mentioned by Kommersant and it is not yet established whether Russians will be forced to take fertility tests.
But hierarchs of the health system of Russia recently promised Prime Minister Mikhail Michoustine: six million citizens will have their “reproductive health” monitored over the coming year.
The Ministry of Health has just sent recommendations to the Russian regions regarding the protocols to follow. According to these guidelines, the people analyzed will be separated into three groups, according to their general health, their medical history and therefore their reproductive health.
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And if we do not know what this classification into three groups will lead to, women will in any case have to go to the office of a psychologist, who will remind them of the ideal age for procreation: from 18 to 35 years old. Men “at risk” will have to have a spermogram.
In short, the Russian system’s recent obsession with the birth rate, which has become one of Vladimir Putin’s absolute priorities for his fifth mandate which has just opened. Its rate has fallen to 1.4 children per woman, almost unheard of since the fall of the USSR.
For the Kremlin, Russia therefore urgently needs to have children. The right to abortion and emergency contraception is already increasingly under threat in the country. Pressure is also increasing on women to devote themselves exclusively to reproduction and family life.