Kremlin Now Fighting Divorce in Russia, ‘a Problem that Doesn’t Exist,’ To Be Precise Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – The To Be Precise portal which tracks social developments in the Russian Federation says that at the present time, the Kremlin has launched a campaign against divorce in the hopes of boosting the birthrate. But the problem it has identified is in fact one that “doesn’t exist.”

            Since January 2025,  the Russian government has increased the costs of those wanting a divorce by eight times and introduced waiting periods and required meetings with counselors in the hopes of reducing the number of divorces and thus making more births likely, the portal says (tochno.st/materials/razvoditsia-posle-10-let-braka).

            But according to To Be Precise, “most Russian marriages are more stable than is commonly believed;” and while divorce occurs most often in the first ten years, the median duration of such marriages is still eight years” and not a few months as the authorities in Moscow seem to believe. 

            Over the course of a lifetime, fewer than half of all marriages dissolve, the portal continues, with “the risk of divorce reduced by children, economic inequality between the partners, and the chronic illness of the husband.” Women are more likely to file for divorce in Russia than men.

            The portal does concede that its figures are incomplete and that the actual number of marriages ending in divorce may be higher, but it insists that even if that is the case, the policy moves Moscow has made are not having a big impact and in fact are directed against a problem that really doesn’t exist.