‘We’re OUTBREEDING you!’ Putin taunts West as he unveils drive to boost Russian birth rate, by Nick Gutteridge.

The Kremlin supremo went on a bizarre rant about fertility as he announced plans to roll out 94 “hi-tech” perinatal centres across the country during his annual address to parliament.

Mr Putin pledged a series of measures, from scientific to social, to grow Russia’s birth rate over the next few decades as he hailed increasing the country’s “human capital” as a major policy.

And in a swipe at the European Union he reeled off the fertility figures for a number of EU member states to demonstrate how his country was outperforming them in terms of population growth. …

Thanks to a series of financial incentives aimed at young families, Russia now has a birth rate of 1.7 children per woman, which is just below the average global tally of 1.8.

However, as Mr Putin so pointedly remarked, it is significantly higher than many of Moscow’s European neighbours, which are struggling with economic stagnation and in some cases falling populations.

Germany, Italy and Austria have birth rates of 1.4, in Spain and Greece the figure stands at 1.3 and in Portugal it is just 1.2. Britain has a higher rate, of around 1.85 children per woman.

A rate of 2.1 per woman is required to maintain a stable population.

hat-tip Stephen Neil