Saturday, November 23, 2024 - Russia needs migrants in order to develop because of its dwindling domestic workforce, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Friday, Nov. 22.
“Migrants are a necessity,” he told state news agency RIA
Novosti.
“We have a tense demographic situation. We live in the
largest country in the world but there aren’t that many of us,” he said.
Earlier this week, Russia’s parliament approved legislation
banning “child-free propaganda”, effectively outlawing any person or
organisation from encouraging others not to have children.
It was a move designed to help remedy a demographic crisis
inherited from the Soviet era and which has worsened since
the conflict in Ukraine.
“We need a labour force in order to have dynamic development
and carry out all our development projects,” Peskov said.
He said Russian authorities welcomed migration.
Anti-migrant rhetoric is common in Russia, especially
towards labourers from ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia who fill key sectors
of the economy.
In July, the Kremlin acknowledged the low population was
“disastrous for the future of the nation”.
The country’s population has not recovered since Soviet
times despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government offering generous
payouts and mortgage subsidies to large families.
Recent demographic problems include a low birth rate, large
numbers of Covid deaths and hundreds of thousands of men fleeing the country to
avoid being mobilised to fight in Ukraine.
In 2023, the fertility rate was 1.41 births per woman of
child-bearing age, according to estimates from the national statistics office
Rosstat, cited by news outlet RBC.
That is under the 2.0 rate needed to replace the existing
population.
Rosstat figures show 920,200 babies were born in Russia
between January and September this year, a 3.4 percent drop on the same period
last year.
Russian media said that was the lowest number of births
since the 1990s.
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