Kenneth Glad
From parliament to the Kremlin, ideas tying intimacy, internet use and national survival are gaining ground, nudging personal behaviour closer to the reach of the state.
Russia’s struggle with falling birth numbers is spilling into unexpected places. As births continue to slide, officials are now probing screens and search histories, arguing that what citizens watch online is shaping the country’s future.
The pressure begins with the data. Russia’s birth rate has been shrinking for a decade, giving fresh urgency to ideas that might once have sounded implausible. Rosstat data show the country’s total fertility rate slipped to 1.374 in 2025, down from 1.4 a year earlier and far below replacement level.
The independent outlet The Moscow Times reports that authorities have stopped publishing the detailed monthly birth figures that were once released as standard. The most recent public numbers show 1.222 million births in 2024, a level not seen in roughly 25 years and about a third lower than a decade earlier.
President Vladimir Putin has responded by urging Russians to revive large families, often invoking images of pre-Soviet households with eight or more children.
Targeting screens
With those figures in mind, some lawmakers are testing more intrusive ideas. State Duma deputy Tatyana Butskaya, who has built her profile around family protection and pro-natalist legislation, suggested that access to adult websites should be limited for people without children.
Her argument was blunt and rooted in physical behaviour rather than morality. “They simply need to have sex. If they don’t have sex, there’s probably a surrogate… These are adult sites,” she said in a radio interview.
The logic reflects a belief that births can be encouraged not only through subsidies or housing, but by steering how people spend evenings alone with their phones.
“If we turn a blind eye to this situation, that sperm will never unite with that egg. People have to make love to have children,” she said.
Doubts at the top
Not everyone in power sounds convinced. Putin himself, according to NDTV, has previously warned that bans may be a crude tool. During his December 2024 “Direct Line” broadcast, he acknowledged the scale of porn consumption, but he questioned whether blocking sites would change behaviour, RT reported.
“The answer can be what? In general, you could ban, but you should always offer an alternative that is more interesting than a porn site,” he said.
It was a rare note of scepticism. And a practical one.
In April 2024, Sota reported that Interior Ministry council member Yuri Sharkovich called for banning the porn industry altogether, claiming it enabled the recruitment of children into terrorism. At the same forum, he criticised lessons teaching young children about bodily autonomy.
While many low-fertility countries focus on tax breaks, childcare or parental leave, Russian officials are pushing in a different direction, sketching rules that reach into bedrooms and browsers alike. Whether these ideas turn into draft laws, tighter filters or public resistance is likely to become clear soon.
Sources: The Moscow Times, NDTV, SOTA
