Running short of soldiers, Russia is turning to novel, long range societal fixes: restricting abortions, banning gay groups, and pardoning female inmates who conceive during marital visits. The changes come as President Putin looks ahead to presidential elections next March.

It looks like Mr. Putin will seek to position Russia as a bulwark against the, in his view, decadent West. Pro-life groups have erected billboards showing two pictures, one of a fetus, the other of a child in a military uniform. “Protect me today,” the fetus says. “So that I can defend you tomorrow,” the boy soldier chimes in.

Russians have only 1.5 babies a woman, well below the 2.1 babies needed to maintain the population. After peaking 30 years ago at 149 million, Russia’s population has fallen to 144 million. By 2045, it is projected to drop to 139 million. These are catastrophic numbers for any country.

Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has caused two demographic setbacks. About 300,000 Russian men have been killed or seriously wounded in the war. One million men have fled the country to avoid the draft. Russia’s kidnapping of at least 19,000 Ukrainian children in the ongoing war has made only a dent in the problem.

“The population will increase … if we learn to dissuade women from having abortions,” the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, lectured the nation earlier this month. 

Taking heed, private clinics in Crimea have stopped performing abortions. Two other regions — Mordovia and Tver — have introduced fines for “coercing” women to have abortions.

Duma members are discussing restricting access to abortion drugs, lowering the limit to terminate a pregnancy to eight weeks, from 12, and requiring written permission from husbands.

To some degree, abortion in Russia is yesterday’s problem. In the 1960s, when birth control was not available, a woman had an average of six abortions. In 1988, 4 million abortions were recorded in Russia. Last year, there were 300,000. Of these, only 180,000 were voluntary.

“There is no abortion epidemic in the country, so why is this topic being floated now?” human rights lawyer Alena Popova wrote on her Telegram channel. “War is a cause of fertility decline. The male population is also shrinking as a result of the war. But we will be told that abortion is to blame.”

The drop in abortions paced a drop in live births. In 2020, Russia had 314 abortions to 1,000 live births almost double the 188 recorded in the European Union. To encourage more births, the government has made a few pro-natalist moves.

Last year, the Kremlin reintroduced the Soviet-era “Mother Heroine” award for women who have 10 or more children. The reward is a cash prize of $16,500. This month, Mr. Putin signed an executive order declaring 2024 the Year of the Family.

Taking another tack, a Duma deputy, Valerey Seleznev, proposed last week that women inmates of fertile age could be offered a deal: “Those who get pregnant or give birth during home leave can have the remainder of their sentences canceled.”

In a different approach, the government wants to suppress homosexuality. On Thursday, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that gay activists should be designated extremists. Since symbols of “extremist” movements are forbidden, the ban would cover gay parades and public displays of the rainbow flag.

“The classification of LGBT as an extremist movement is the beginning of Putin’s election campaign,” a Moscow city council candidate, Ivan Zhdanov, wrote on X. “This is his clear program for a new term: a step towards the complete Iran-isation, isolation of Russia.

“There will,” Mr. Zhdanov continued, “be a complete distraction from real problems, the creation of mythical enemies, discrimination against parts of the population on various grounds — this is just the beginning.”

Hailing the move, nationalist oligarch Konstantin Malofeev wrote yesterday on Telegram:  “This is good news. Sodomy should have no place on our land. It’s especially good that this decision was taken on the eve of the beginning of the Year of the Family.”

Russia’s interior ministry, to avoid what it sees as moral contamination by Western visitors, has drafted a bill mandating foreign visitors would have to sign a “loyalty agreement” on arrival at Russian airports.

As state news agency TASS reported Wednesday, the bill would bar foreigners from disparaging “the concept of the institution of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and values associated with the family, motherhood, fatherhood and childhood. Upon entering Russia, foreigners would also be legally required to refrain from propagandizing non-traditional sexual relations.”

To some Russians, these strategies are longshots. Moscow journalist Tatyana Pusharyova cites a new joke making the rounds. The best way to reverse Russia’s declining birthrate is to draw on Soviet history. Stop importing Western condoms that work. In their place, sell domestic ones that do not.