Putin’s Anti-Abortion Campaign Collides with War-Driven Budget Cuts

In early 2024 the Kremlin ordered the development of proposals that would require search engines to prioritize pregnancy-support sites when users look for abortion services. At the same time, authorities have intensified restrictions: since 2023, at least 25 regions have imposed fines on organisations and individuals that encourage women to terminate pregnancies (Human Rights Watch). Private clinics face pressure to cease providing abortions, and women seeking the procedure must endure a waiting period of two to seven days plus mandatory pre-abortion counselling aimed at dissuasion.

Newsweek

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova disclosed in August that Russia’s fertility rate stands at 1.352, far below the 2.1 level needed for population replacement. Researchers estimate only 1.19 million births in 2025, a post-Soviet low, and demographers project the population will fall from roughly 146 million in early 2025 to about 141 million by 2036. To counteract the trend, the 2025-launched national “Family” project bundles maternity grants, subsidised mortgages and child benefits. Eligible families can receive roughly 729,000 rubles (? $9,000) for a first child and an additional 234,000 rubles for a second.

Newsweek

The draft 2027 budget earmarks 17.15 trillion rubles (? $213 billion) for defence—35.2 % of all federal outlays—while federal healthcare receives only 1.82 trillion rubles (? $22.6 billion), or 3.7 %. Funding for the “Family” project accounts for 5.9 % of the budget, a full 10 % below the level the government announced earlier in the year. The Accounts Chamber reported a 5.8 % decline in regional healthcare spending in the first half of the year versus the same period in 2025. On October 21, legislators in Primorsky Krai cut education spending by 644 million rubles and social support by 207 million rubles; healthcare programmes lost more than a billion rubles, and several hospital projects were postponed. The regional labour ministry attributed these cuts to wartime budget pressures and warned that some social payments would be delayed, though officials pledged to meet all obligations once funding becomes available. An additional 1.5 billion rubles were diverted to war-related assistance, and the signing bonus for new military recruits was raised to 3 million rubles.

Newsweek

President Vladimir Putin has framed low fertility as a national-security threat, reviving the Soviet “Mother Heroine” award in August 2022 and declaring demographic decline a priority at the September Eastern Economic Forum. He has insisted that the crisis predates Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, citing lower fertility rates in Japan and South Korea as evidence. Conversely, a Center for Strategic and International Studies report notes that the nearly five-year war has already killed or wounded 1.4 million Russian men, underscoring the demographic toll of the conflict.

Newsweek

The simultaneous tightening of abortion access, modest family-benefit incentives, and massive defence spending create a fiscal tension that threatens the delivery of promised social benefits. Analysts suggest that unless the Kremlin reallocates resources from the war effort to fully fund the “Family” project and health services, the demographic decline may accelerate despite the anti-abortion campaign. The policy mix highlights the challenge of reconciling a pronatalist agenda with the economic realities of a prolonged conflict.

Newsweek