Mayor calls on men to impregnate their wives - The head of the city of Nevinnomyssk in southern Russi

FILE PHOTO: Pregnant women at the prenatal ward.
©Sputnik / Kirill Braga

Men should “sneak up” on their wives and impregnate them this very evening, the mayor of the city of Nevinnomyssk in Stavropol Region in southern Russia has insisted.

The fact that in Nevinnomyssk, which has a population of some 117,000, only around 700 children are born yearly is unsatisfactory, Mikhail Minenkov declared in a video on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.

There are various reasons for people refraining from having kids, including “the belief that they haven’t earned enough money or the desire to live for oneself,” the mayor wrote.

However, he insisted that low birth rates are a path towards the “degradation” of society. “If there’ll be few of us, we’ll lose everywhere and in everything,” Minenkov warned.

It’s clear that there are more than 700 “healthy, strong women who are capable of becoming mothers” in Nevinnomyssk, according to the city head.

”I want to address the men. This evening, sneak up on your loved ones so that in exactly nine months, not 700, but 10,000 children are born,” he wrote.

For birth rates to increase, “one mustn’t sleep, eat, or drink; instead, one must fall in love,” Minenkov added.

The mayor, who has three children, acknowledged that his comments “might sound naive and funny.” But he insisted that developing society through bringing more children into this world is “the main program of development of our city, our region, and Russia as a whole.”

The state statistics agency Rosstat reported earlier this month that 1.16 million people were born in Russia between January and November last year. It said the natural decline in population has decreased by 19.3% compared to the same period in 2022.

Rosstat also presented its demographic forecast for 2046 in January. According to the most optimistic scenario, the Russian population would grow by 4.59 million people and reach 150.87 million by that time. The pessimistic scenario says that the number of people living in the country could decrease by 15.4 million to 130.6 million in 2046.