Moscow- For a quarter century, President Vladimir Putin has faced the spectre of Russia’s shrinking and aging population.

In 1999, a year before he came to power, the number of babies born in Russia plunged to its lowest recorded level. In 2005, Putin said the demographic woes needed to be resolved by maintaining “social and economic stability”.

In 2019, he said the problem still “haunted” the country.

As recently as Thursday, he told a Kremlin demographic conference that increasing births was “crucial” for Russia.

Putin has launched initiatives to encourage people to have more children — from free school meals for large families to awarding Soviet-style “hero-mother” medals to women with 10 or more children.

“Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, and even

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