What Russians have to say about their declining birthrate:
Former Deputy Premier Alfred Koh lambasts Russian authorities in previous years, for attempting to attribute a birth rate rise to Mr Putin’s measures, saying it was due to “a generation of people born during a baby boom under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that has reached child-bearing age.”
Mr Koh argues that the Kremlin should take responsibility for the current situation. In his Facebook post that has had over 700 likes and 100 shares, his reasons for the decreasing birth rate are: “When people’s income is falling for a fourth year in a row, when we have incessantly been fighting since 2014, that we have broken off from the entire civilised world and that the poverty in Russia is shooting up”.
“By conducting a criminal social policy - cutting down on the number of schools and hospitals, not creating new jobs, driving young families into mortgage servitude for many years, depriving us of simple confidence in tomorrow - do the authorities really want to increase the birth rate in Russia?” one user on Twitter commented.
A popular blogger El Murid said on LiveJournal: “The Kremlin has got nothing to do with the previous spike in the birth rate. It has not left any reserves; people simply lack motivation to have children because you cannot give them anything besides poverty and the feeling of hopelessness. The current regime undoubtedly deserves credit for that.”
“This is a trend that has long been predicted,” said one commentator on a TJournal article.
Some posted sardonic comments regarding the current regime in Russia. A meme that gained over 17,000 likes on VKontakte’s (VK) community group page MDK read: Yeah right. It’s the best time to have kids now because the country is flourishing.”
One VK user posted: “The birth rate will soon disappear completely by 2024, at the end of yet another Putin term in office.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42873763
Patriarch Kirill opposes abortion, which makes him a better leader than Putin.