Infertility Increasing and Affecting Ever Younger Russians, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 22 – In its drive to increase the birthrate of Russians, the Kremlin faces a many problems including on that is seldom discussed, that few of its programs address and that in at least one case make the problem even worse, according to Russian experts surveyed by Elena Rychkova of the Nakanune news agency. 

            Between 2023 and 2024, the number of cases of infertility diagnosed in Russia rose 5.5 percent to 245,800 women and 6.9 percent to 32,700 men, the result of both medical conditions and stress factors like fatigue, poor nutrition, and especially increases in the use of anti-depressants, medical researchers say (nakanune.ru/articles/124745/).

            Because these behavioral consequences are more often found in younger people than older cohorts, that has led to increases in infertility among both men and women at ever earlier ages, precisely the time when underlying medical conditions are typically the best for having children.

            Most government programs intended to boost the birthrate ignore these factors and instead relying on financial incentives and increasing opposition to abortion. While the former may help reduce stress, it isn’t explicitly intended to do so; and anti-abortion campaigns may increase stress and thus increase infertility.

            But the most important consequence of government policies in this area is the constant raising of the age that Moscow considers young. Now, it stands at 40. That is designed to ensure that couples who want to have children well into their 30s will not feel that they are taking a risk. But in fact, experts say, after 35, the physical condition of women leads to more infertility.

            That in turn means that talking about youth as extending to age 40 may lead some couples to delay trying to have children and those who do may find themselves less able to have them, something that will push down the fertility rate in the Russian Federation still further, exactly the reverse of what the Kremlin wants.  

Russia Media Losing Audiences as People are Tired of Bad News and as Aggregator Algorithms Expand, Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 22 – Russian media are losing their audiences for many of the same reasons that their counterparts in other countries are: people are tired of bad news and feel a sense of information overload and at the same time aggregator algorithms like Google are summarizing media products in ways that mean people don’t have to go to the originals.

            Such downward pressure is costing many media outlets their audiences even if such newspapers and websites are able to escape pressures to conform from the authorities, commentator Denis Yakovlev writes (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/novosti-bez-chitateley-pochemu-smi-terjajut-auditoriju-po-vsemu-miru-i-kak-eto-proishodit-v-rossii).

These two factors are hitting media at all levels in the Russian Federation. Between May 2025 and May 2026, Russians turned to internet media sites far less often. In Moscow, the decline was from 17.2 million users a month to only 12.3 million this May. At the regional and local level, the declines were even more precipitous, by almost 50 percent or even more.

Consequently, any analysis of the Russian media scene must recognize this and not ascribe them to Kremlin actions alone. Indeed, Yakovlev suggests, the impact of the popular desire to avoid bad news and the willingness of people to use aggregator summaries rather than go to originals may be even more important.

If these twin factors continue to operate, many of the media operations that now offer their own product will close regardless of whether the Kremlin seeks that outcome or not in an particular case; and the amount of genuinely produced news will decline perhaps even more than those around Putin in fact want. 

Andrey Danilov, ‘the Saami Navalny,’ Says Separatism is ‘Nonsense’ for His Nation but that It will Survive

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 19 – Andrey Danilov, known to his friends and supporters as “the Saami Navalny,” says that separatism is “nonsense” for his numerically small people in the Russian North – there are only about 1300 left there  --  but that his nation will survive because its members have their own strategy for dealing with the governments under which they live.

            That strategy, he says, combines a readiness to work with the governments on whose territory they live while simultaneously resisting attacks on their culture and language and withdrawing to the north when these states adopt aggressive strategies against them (nemoskva.net/2026/06/19/saami-my-est/).

            And they have the advantage, Danilov continues, in that there are Saami communities in Norway, Sweden and Finland, all of whom unlike Russia admitted guilt for their past genocidal policies and now actively support the Saami who live on their territories, including those like him who have fled there from Russia.

            He had been deputy chairman of the Saami Parliament of the Kola Peninsula in the Russian Federation before he fled from that country when Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022. Now he lives among Saami in Norway and continues to speak out in defense of  his nation.

            Of mixed ethnicity himself – his father is a Saami while his mother is an ethnic Russian – Danilov grew up at a time when few of his age cohort spoke the Saami language; and he admits that he still has to use a dictionary when he does because he has not yet mastered all the words he needs.

            According to the émigré activist, “the Saami are a semi-nomadic cross-border numerically small people who have an anthem and a flag but have never had their own statehood” or army. “Today, they live in four countries, who colonized their lands and forces the Saami to retreat northward when that was possible.                     

“In Norway, Sweden and Finland, the Sami parliaments have been working as official representative bodies of the indigenous people for several decades,” he continues. “They do not pass laws, but without their consent, no issue concerning language, culture, reindeer husbandry and other traditional crafts can be resolved.”

            That is what the Saami people inside Russia have sought to copy. They too created representative bodies, but those were first taken over and gutted by the Russian authorities and then suppressed altogether, although Danilov still refers t himself as the deputy chairman of their common parliament.

Ukraine’s Drone Attacks on Moscow Won’t have the Immediate Impact Many Expect, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 18 – Many in the West and in Ukraine and Russia as well “think that bombing Moscow is completely different from bombing Voronezh and that Muscovites will react differently and demand that Putin “immediately end the war, Vladimir Pastukhov says; but that is “nothing more than another illusion.”

            “Muscovites,” the London-based Russian analyst says, “are not separated from the rest of Russia by any ‘Chinese wall;” and they won’t act either more rapidly or more effectively to this challenge  (t.me/v_pastukhov/1931 reposted at /echofm.online/opinions/u-putina-na-novoj-stadii-agonii-est-vremya-vybrat).

            Pastukhov continues: “Most likely the reaction of society” – both in Moscow and in Russia as a whole – “will be slow.” Russians do on occasion, perhaps once every 150 years, rise in merciless revolt, “but that doesn’t happen in an empty place and certainly not because Moscow is bombed.”

            According to the Russian analyst, “the Russian historical clock” has returned to “somewhere either of 1855 or 1916: the tsarist armored train is still moving forward bugt the rails are slowly being dismantled and used for firewood … But for now, we are only talking about a delayed and not an immediate effect.”

            Consequently, Pastukhov concludes, “Putin at this new stage in the agony of his regime still has time to choose whether to follow the path of Nicholas I and go for a humiliating exit from Crimean War 2.0 or to following the path of Nicholas II, go all our and bring the country to the brink of a palace coup.”

Russian Economy ‘Doesn’t Need Universal Higher Education,’ Minister who Oversees Universities and Science Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 19 – The rising demand for university degrees by the population, Valery Falkov says, “does not align with the economy’s needs” and is something that is “neither good nor right,” and the balance between specialized secondary education and higher education must be reset.

            According to the minister for science and higher education, “the demand for higher education that has built up over decades” means that today “practically every high school graduate” in Russia wants to go on to university. That must change and Moscow is taking steps to do so (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/06/19/rossii-ne-nuzhno-mnogo-liudei-s-vysshim-obrazovaniem-zaiavil-glava-minobrnauki-news).

            In reporting the minister’s words, Novaya Gazeta Europe points to the reduction in government funded slots and even the size of fee-paying students, increases in tuition this year with plans for more in the years ahead, tracking both pupils and students into the military for service in Ukraine, and restrictions on contacts with universities and scholars abroad.

            It is certainly true that Russia like many other countries needs the kind of skills that secondary schools can and in many cases do teach, such restrictions on higher education will inevitably mean that the chances for the scientific breakthroughs that all countries want will be especially limited in places like Russia.

            In the short term, this cutback in access to higher education will infuriate many Russians who had hoped that a higher education would give their children a greater chance for upward social mobility and thus the restriction of such chances will become yet another reason for an increasing number of Russians to be angry with the current regime.  

            

Moscow’s Violation of Rights of Indigenous Peoples ‘Systemic in Nature,’ New ‘Arctida’ Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 18 – Moscow’s violations of the rights of indigenous peoples is “systemic in nature,” according to a new study by the Arctida group, the first Russian NGO devoted to examining the situation in the Far North that was established in 2022 but then declared by Moscow to be “an undesirable organization” earlier this year.

            The 106-page study focused on six cases of the ways in which Moscow’s drive to develop the North has run roughshod over the rights of the peoples of the North and even threaten their survival. (The full text of this study is available at cdn.sanity.io/files/tsza235h/production/b821a512c1f38ecffb2b54133b74d3fe34bf5735.pdf).

            Its overarching conclusion is that “the violation of Indigenous peoples' rights in the Russian Arctic is systemic in nature, stemming not merely from isolated incidents but from the very structure of the prevailing regulatory and institutional framework” in the Russian Federatin at the present time.

“Under this framework,’ the study says, “indigenous peoples and communities bear the primary social, environmental, and territorial costs of resource development, yet lack commensurate influence over decision-making processes” with consultations mainly for show and often with government controlled GONGOs rather than the peoples themselves.

The Arctida report urges that Moscow’s approach must be changed, made transparent and involve representatives of the population at every stage of projects as participants rather than obstacles or objects of state action. Otherwise, the future of the numerically small peoples of the North is going to be grim indeed.

Kadyrov Treats Russians Far More Tolerantly than He Does Chechens, Pleasing Moscow but Alienating His Own People, ‘NeMoskva’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 18 – Ramzan Kadyrov has treated Chechens far less well than he has ethnic Russians and others who arrive to work with his regime, a policy that undoubtedly plays well in Moscow but that is infuriating and even alienating the titular nationality of his republic, Beka Atsayev says.

            This situation has reached the point, the NeMoskva journalist argues, that it is now possible to speak of “Two Chechnyas,” the one, mostly ethnic Russian or part of his government, that is loyal to Kadyrov and Moscow and the second, overwhelmingly Chechen, that increasing despises both (nemoskva.net/2026/06/18/dve-chechni/).

            The two exist in what can be described as “parallel realities,” an extreme form of what may exist in other non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation but one because of Chechnya’s past that that is making each more contemptuous of the other and leading the Kadyrov-Russian one to become ever more repressive, thus likely sparking an explosion.

            Among the manifestations of this division, Atsayev points to the fact that “non-Chechen citizens of the republic have the right to express disagreement with the decisions of the powers without repression following” while Chechens who dissent are immediately suppressed often in the harshest possible ways.

            Other examples he cites include the fact that Chechen police know not to issue tickets to Russian drivers for offenses that they would give citations to Chechen ones and the division of the prison system in Chechnya between facilities for Russians and facilities for Chechens, a kind of “segregation” that is seeping into ever more segments of life there.

            This may please Moscow in the short term, given its pro-Russian position, but it is an approach likely to so deepen divisions between Russians and Chechens that when there is an inevitable weakening of central power, the Chechens will increasingly act in an anti-Russian fashion, at least in part because of what Kadyrov is doing that the center welcomes now.         

            Despite its ethnic Chechen face, it is increasingly the case that the Kadyrov regime, despite is ethnic Chechen face, now appears to other Chechens as nothing more than an occupying force, a group of compradors who have sold out to Moscow – and in the future, that sense is likely to trigger exactly the kind of explosion Moscow installed Kadyrov to prevent.