Caught Between Two Pressures: Militarism and Reproductive Control

Over the course of three and a half years of active military operations, the combined population of the Kursk, Belgorod, and Bryansk regions has decreased by 127,500 people. For comparison, the total population loss between 2011 and 2022 was 145,700. There are two main reasons for this decline: increased mortality and population outflow. Eighty percent of the recorded population loss is due to more deaths than births. The remaining 20 percent is attributed to people leaving border areas. However, the actual numbers are likely higher because not everyone updates their official residence when they move. Based on the official statistics alone, the border regions, particularly the Kursk region, have lost approximately 30% of their population.

Although Russian civil registry offices (ZAGS) have begun to conceal data on births and deaths, it's clear that the repressive state apparatus has failed to improve the demographic situation through restrictive measures. The Kursk region has long served as a testing ground for anti-abortion restrictions that are later implemented across Russia. These include a bill that bans “coercive abortion,” the removal of abortion services from private clinics, and mandatory “pre-abortion counseling” with psychologists and social workers. Other measures involve showing pro-life films in schools and giving gifts like baby booties to women considering abortion. The region has become a vanguard in enacting such restrictions.

In this way, two “special operations” are simultaneously occurring in the Kursk region: one military and the other demographic.

In line with the traditionalist narrative that has gained traction since Russia invaded Ukraine, officials often blame women for not having children, saying that their values are “all wrong.” Women born in the 1990s are particularly criticized for being career-focused and influenced by Western propaganda.

But what do young, child-free women from border regions think about this? What is it like to live under the pressure of militarism and reproduction? Here are three women from the Kursk region in their own words.

Angelina, 30 years old
Works on a rotational basis

“On February 17, 2022, I found out that I was pregnant. My boyfriend and I had been together for over two years and had been living together for a year. We weren’t trying to have a baby, but we weren’t particularly careful either. Honestly, I wasn’t opposed to getting pregnant. I felt like it was time to start a family. We had a place to live, decent jobs, and a stable relationship. I thought that if it happened accidentally, I wouldn't have an abortion.”

My mom had me late in life, and she really wanted grandchildren. She often brought it up with me and my boyfriend, suggesting that we get married and have kids while she was still there and in good health to help us. So, I wasn’t thrilled when I found out I was pregnant. But I accepted it. I figured it meant the time had come, and I was ready to have the baby. My boyfriend was overjoyed. He immediately started planning a spring or summer wedding and began thinking about baby names.

The start of the war was a total shock to me. I had relatives in Kyiv and Kharkiv and cousins in Kherson and Sumy. My mom grew up in Sumy. My dad was from Kherson. I visited Sumy a few times as a kid. My mom was close with our Ukrainian relatives and talked to them often. We were beside ourselves with worry. Just to give you an update, my cousins are now safe in Germany, and our relatives from Kharkiv and Kyiv are okay, too. My boyfriend was from a small border town in the Kursk region. His parents still live there. I thought he would understand my anxiety about my relatives. But about a week into the war, he just seemed to fly off the handle.

He used to just drink a few beers. But he suddenly started downing liters of vodka and cognac. One time, he drank four liters of cognac in just two days. This bender went on for weeks without stopping. He quit his job. Started screaming at me. He shouted that he was a patriot and was going to join the Wagner private military company and fight in the war — even though he’d never served in the military! I didn’t recognize the man I had fallen in love with. This wasn’t Sasha anymore. He had become someone else — angry, cruel, a complete psychopath. I began to fear him.

On top of everything, he began insulting my parents. He said things like, “Khokhols [editor’s note: a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainians] aren’t even people.” That someone should report them and have their Ukrainian relatives checked. What if they were spies or part of the Ukrainian military?” One day, he got drunk, hit me in the face, and raped me so badly that I bled. I had finally reached my limit. I moved in with my parents and decided to get an abortion. I just managed to make it in time — the abortion was performed at 12 weeks.

I asked my dad to go to Sasha’s home and collect my things. I didn’t want to see him at all. To make matters worse, he found out about the abortion and began sending me threats and insults from fake accounts. He called me a murderer, a monster, and a scumbag. He wrote that he should have started beating me earlier and tied me to the radiator so I couldn't “go and kill our baby.” Meanwhile, my ex didn’t think there was anything wrong with risking a miscarriage by raping me.

Then, I found out that someone had withdrawn 45,000 rubles from my credit card, incurring a substantial interest rate. It turned out it was Sasha. From another fake account, he wrote to me that it was “compensation” for the fact that I had “killed our child and deprived him of the opportunity to become a father.” Honestly, I couldn't believe something so absurd. My parents insisted I go to the police and file a report for theft.

My ex-fiancé never returned the money, but he did go off to war. I don’t know whether he joined a private military company or ended up somewhere else. All I know is that he's alive and fighting somewhere.

I’m in a healthy relationship now. I didn’t feel safe until earlier this year, when my new boyfriend and I moved away together to work rotational shifts. At some point, I realized I could no longer walk the streets of Kursk without fear. I saw Sasha in every soldier, as if he had come back to take revenge on me. I began having constant panic attacks, insomnia, nightmares, and a fear of crowded places. I only feel somewhat normal when I’m away from Kursk, somewhere without the military men. My boyfriend and I decided to leave the city for good, and to bring my parents with us.

I’m firmly against restricting access or imposing any kind of ban on abortion. If I hadn’t been able to have an abortion, I would have been permanently tied to an unstable, dangerous man. Honestly, it would have been better to die than to go on living the way I did during those weeks in the spring of 2022.

I believe women should not be talked out of having abortions. When I went to the women’s clinic, the staff pressured me to continue with the pregnancy. They tried to scare me by mentioning infertility and cancer. They also brought in a psychologist and a social worker. They told me that I would gain weight and become masculine due to hormonal imbalances. They said that abortion is a terrible sin. If I hadn’t been determined to get an abortion and to end my engagement, I probably wouldn't have done it. They would have broken me.

Honestly, it’s a disgusting feeling to humiliate yourself in front of strangers and explain why you need an abortion. I once read an article about a woman who had a similar experience at a clinic. She said it made her feel helpless, powerless, and desperate, like she had lost control of her life. That’s exactly how I felt. Like a limp piece of meat in someone else’s hands. Like a doll or a toy. Not a living person. I don’t wish that on anyone. This so-called “counseling” at women’s clinics is just cruel and psychologically violent.

Valeriya, 33 years old

Factory worker

“For the past few years, I’ve been dreaming of having a child. It’s painful and absurd to read all these claims that the government has created ideal conditions for women and that the only reason we’re not giving birth is because of feminism or “childfree propaganda.” Well, here I am: a woman who wants to have a baby. What good does that do me if I simply don’t have the opportunity? 

I live with my retired mother. She had me at 42 after struggling with infertility for years. My father passed away ten years ago.

Now, my mother is disabled and has almost completely lost her eyesight. She is likely to go completely blind soon. Unfortunately, standard treatment under the public healthcare system hasn’t helped, and we can’t afford any experimental therapies. All our money goes to utilities, food, and medications.

I started working in manufacturing right after graduating from university. I’ve been there ever since. I make exactly 30,000 rubles a month. That’s for working six days a week. Everyone here earns peanuts despite the heavy workload. On top of that, we’re constantly forced to contribute money “to support our boys on the frontlines.” They collect funds almost every week to buy tactical goggles, gloves, medicine, or something else. Each worker is expected to contribute at least a thousand rubles. If you refuse, they start making waves and threats. “How could you not give money to the defenders of Kursk?” they say. They threaten to deny you a vacation whenever you want if you don’t contribute. They also threaten to deduct the money from your wages, fire you, or report you to the authorities.

On my way to work, I passed a billboard urging people in the Kursk region to sign a military contract and join the fight in the “special military operation.” They promise huge sums of money — hundreds of thousands of rubles. Currently, one gets paid 800,000 rubles just for signing the contract. I keep wondering and just don’t understand: if they’re offering that kind of money, why are they still collecting donations from women earning just 20, 30, or 40 thousand rubles a month? Sometimes I see the military buying expensive alcohol in bulk at the store. They act arrogantly, harass women, and shout out things like, “We’ve got money, we’ll buy you anything you want.” Honestly, it makes me want to cry. Pensioners and teachers are scrounging up money to buy socks to send to the frontlines, while they throw cash around like it’s nothing.

I’ve tried talking about it with acquaintances and colleagues. But so far, it’s been pointless. Many agree it’s unfair, but they’re too afraid to speak out against these forced contributions.

If I were to go on maternity leave right now, I’d receive the minimum allowance — about 13,000 rubles a month. How is anyone with a child supposed to survive on that? And after the child turns 18 months, the support stops entirely. Maybe one can hope for a few state handouts.

However, I doubt the generosity of men. In this country, the debt from unpaid child support has already exceeded 250 billion rubles. The father of your child can abandon his family at any time, stop paying child support, and face no consequences. Even though I was fortunate to have a good father, most of my friends' fathers are exactly like I’ve just mentioned. I want to have a baby “on my own,” as they say here. I’ll be happy to become a mother if I meet the right person. But I still want to become a mother even if I don’t. A few years ago, I promised myself that if I didn’t have a partner by 35 who was ready to have a child with me, I’d try to do it on my own. But now, I’m not sure it will happen. And it’s not because of money.

I live near a military base. The missile warning siren is so loud that it wakes me up even when I have the windows shut and earplugs in. To give you an idea, it can go off as many as 20 times a day. Sometimes, there are four or five alerts in an hour. I’ve started taking sleeping pills just to get some rest. Then there are the constant sounds of explosions from air defense systems or drones hitting nearby. How would I possibly put a baby to sleep in these circumstances?

We frequently get unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and drones flying overhead. There have already been several “strikes” in our building courtyard. Every night when I go to bed, I can’t be sure that our building will make it through the night. And, honestly, it would be a mercy if it were just a drone and not missile fragments.

It might sound dramatic, but I’m seriously asking myself: do I even have the moral right to bring a new person into this world, if I can’t offer them safety or any certainty about the future? For example, there were plenty of problems, even wars, in the North Caucasus in the '90s and 2000s. But our city was relatively safe. At least we didn’t have to search for bomb shelters. Now, the thought of planning a pregnancy when I know my child will likely have fewer opportunities than I did feels like betraying them before they're even born.

Irina, 29 years old‍

Business Owner

“I started dating my husband when we were both still in the ninth grade. We got married as soon as he returned from regular military service. We had always planned to have at least one, and ideally two, children before turning thirty. For a while, it seemed likely to happen. I think it’s fair to say our life could be described as good, even truly happy.

At the age of twenty, we started a small business together. We worked hard and studied remotely at the same time. At first, we couldn’t afford much. Every bit of money we saved went into growing the business. And after a couple of years, we started to see real success. We became profitable and rented a second location. By the time COVID hit, we already had five locations across Kursk. We were able to buy a small house and cars for both of us. I remember thinking, “Why not enjoy a few more years of living for ourselves and traveling? And then we’ll start trying for our first child.”

COVID and the lockdowns hit us hard. Even though the business had completely ground to a halt, we still had to pay rent and cover some employee salaries. For several months, we were unable to operate due to pandemic restrictions. We had never really worried about loans before. But suddenly they became a source of stress. Many of our competitors shut down their businesses, but we managed to stay afloat without closing a single location, although our financial cushion was badly depleted. Still, by the fall of 2021, we began to feel hopeful again, believing that our struggles were finally behind us. 

We felt completely lost when the war began. We didn’t know who to listen to or what to believe. Before then, we hadn’t paid much attention to politics. However, starting in February 2022, we began watching different YouTube vloggers and following the news. I think people can get used to anything over time. That's what happened to us. We adapted to the fact that there was a war nearby, our city was under drone attack, and there were new threats around us. When the mobilization started, my husband and I were terrified he’d be drafted, as he’s young, healthy, and had served in the military. But in the end, nothing happened. He never received a summons. Of course, our quality of life declined, our income dropped, and anxiety became a constant presence. Still, we tried to keep living the way we had before and keep growing the business. Perhaps it's a kind of psychological defense mechanism. You create your own little world and refuse to accept that the outside world is falling apart. Looking back now, I think we just didn’t want to face the new reality.

Everything changed when the Ukrainian Armed Forces began active operations in the Kursk region. My husband is originally from a small village right on the border with Ukraine. He’d been living in Kursk since he was 14 with his older brother so he could attend a city school and later enroll in university. His mother and grandmother stayed behind in that village. It had been unstable there since the start of the war. There were artillery, drone, or missile strikes. However, they refused to leave until the very last moment. When we found out that Ukrainian forces had entered the area, we dropped everything and drove out to pick them up.

I don’t even want to remember what we went through. I’ll just say this: we barely made it out alive. We had to dodge landmines along the road, and the car door was riddled with bullet holes. Since then, my husband’s mother and grandmother have been living with us.

From that time on, everything good in our lives started to fall apart. I had always been proud of my close-knit team. But by the end of 2024, nearly half of my experienced employees had left Kursk because of the war. Some moved to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Krasnodar, or Nizhny Novgorod. Now, the majority of the staff is gone. It takes a long time to train new hires. Alas, they end up leaving eventually. My husband immediately applied to the loan relief program available to residents of border regions. However, the bank stalled for nearly six months. They rejected the request and demanded photos of the destruction in the village, pictures of the house, documents for the property, and other nonsense. The fact that Ukrainian forces are in that area was completely ignored. For this reason, we are unable to go there to take photos or collect documents. As a result, we’ve already had to shut down two of our five locations, and by the end of summer, we’ll be closing another one. Compared to the first half of 2023, our income has dropped by a factor of six or seven. I shudder to think what it would be like if we had a child right now!

An air defense system is just a few hundred meters from our home. Because of that, there’s constant, deafening noise. The walls shake. The missile sirens constantly go off. We have three cats and a small dog at home. The dog now regularly hides in corners, refuses to eat, whines, and pees inside. I don’t know what to do or how to help our pets. I made the difficult decision to try to find them homes with good people outside of Kursk. So far, I’ve only managed to rehome one of the cats.

I often think about what it would have been like if I’d had a young child. How would they have coped with all of this? We probably would have had to abandon our home and leave with nothing. A family with four children lived next door. I saw firsthand how deeply the situation affected them. The youngest became terrified of loud noises. For example, whenever he heard a car horn, he would drop to the ground in the middle of the street, cover his ears, and start screaming and crying. Eventually, they couldn’t bear it any longer. They simply left their home and moved away. In hindsight, I feel incredibly lucky that I didn’t have a child before the invasion.

I’ve never liked the aggressive rhetoric around childbirth. In my view, only a couple have the right to decide when to have a child. No one else should interfere. If a woman isn’t ready to give birth, she has valid reasons, and those should be respected. But over the past year, I’ve felt something closer to fury every time I hear someone insist that women must have as many children as possible, as quickly as possible. Do any of these advocates ever think about the mental and physical toll this will take on those children? Will their psychological state resemble the one I see in my pets? Or in the little boy next door? I can’t understand how anyone could wish that on their child. That baby’s nerves would be shattered from birth.

I feel enraged when I read the news on banning so-called “abortion propaganda,” restricting any positive mention of being childfree, removing abortion services from private clinics, and limiting access to emergency contraception.

I’ve subscribed to several pro-choice Telegram channels and support them with donations. My husband and I used to be certain we wanted children, at least two. And yes, we had everything in place to raise them. However, the conditions for raising a child are now simply nonexistent. And honestly, I don’t even know if I’ll ever want to give birth at all”.

****

Russian propaganda continues to frame the "Special Military Operation" as occurring solely on Ukrainian soil and has little to no effect on the daily lives of ordinary Russians. At most, they mention refugees from border areas or vaguely refer to problems that Russian officials claim to be heroically solving. But in reality, the Russian government continues to ignore the profound, all-encompassing impact the war has had on every aspect of life in the border regions.

All the women we spoke to expressed a deep sense of vulnerability. They have lost their familiar sources of stability and haven’t found new ones. Authorities claim to be “protecting” them from imaginary threats like “coercive abortion” and “childfree ideology,” while doing nothing to shield them from real dangers — like domestic violence. Officials in Putin’s increasingly militarized administration are obsessed with birth rates, while women in Kursk are worried about the health of the children they already have. These children have to go to sleep to the sound of explosions and air defense sirens. Lawmakers deny the agency of women who choose not to give birth, dismissing them as victims of “Western influence.” But the women of Kursk tell a different story: one rooted not in ideology, but in lived reality. It’s not the West, but Putin’s war, that has forced them to reconsider bringing new life into this world.

‍