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Russian Schools Ramp Up Posts Promoting Early Births and Large Families Since War Began
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Russian school communities on VK are increasingly posted messages encouraging early childbirth, large families, premarital sexual abstinence, and opposition to abortion since Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine began, according to the independent outlet Verstka on February 2.
The outlets said they reviewed more than 50 million posts published before 2026 by over 30,000 school communities that were verified through Russia’s state services portal and labeled as state organizations, then filtered the material using keywords linked to pregnancy, childbirth, large families, abortion, chastity, and reproductive health.
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They said they identified more than 234,000 posts containing that vocabulary since 2021, with the number rising after the 2022–2023 school year and peaking at more than 106,000 posts in the 2023–2024 school year. They said the volume remained elevated in 2024–2025 and in the first months of the current school year.
Verstka also said the increase coincided with expanded requirements for state bodies and subordinate institutions, including schools, to maintain official pages on social networks, and with a broader official campaign promoting “traditional values,” including Russia’s declaration of 2024 as the “Year of the Family.”
They said patterns varied by region, with Dagestan among the most active in posts about childbirth and benefits for large families, while the term “chastity” appeared most often in school communities in Tver region, including posts describing clergy-led discussions on family roles and premarital relationships.
The investigation also said anti-abortion messaging increased in school communities alongside a wider regional push to restrict what officials describe as “inducement” to terminate pregnancies.
It said school communities in Voronezh region stood out for repeated reposting of notices about a regional ban on persuading women to have abortions, and it described a wider stream of centrally prepared materials that schools circulated on demography and family policy.
This push comes amidst rapidly falling birth rates, combined with heavy battlefield losses, as Russia records its tenth consecutive year of fertility decline—despite aggressive state efforts to promote childbirth through propaganda, benefits for large families, and pronatalist rhetoric embedded in school and media campaigns.
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