THE Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the Russian women to have eight or more children and make large families ‘the norm’ amid rising death toll in his war against Ukraine.

The birth rate in Russia has been falling steadily since the 1990s and the country has suffered more than 300,000 casualties since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, according to figures kept by Kiev.

In a speech via video link to the World Russian People’s Council in Moscow on Tuesday, Mr Putin said that the growth of the Russian population will be “our goal for the coming decades”.

“Many of our people maintain the tradition of the family, where four, five or more children are raised”, Putin said. “Remember that in Russian families our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had 7 and 8 children. Let us preserve and revive these traditions. Having many children, a large family, should become a norm, a way of life for everyone in Russia.”

The conference was chaired by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, and was attended by representatives of other traditional religious organizations of Russia. His topic was “The Present and Future of the Russian World.”

Putin himself has only two publicly known children – daughters with his ex-wife Lyudmila, Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, who were hit by US sanctions after last year’s invasion.

However, a long time ago he is rumored in the Russian press to have several other offspring from his relationships with millionaire Svetlana Krivonogikh and Olympic gold medalist gymnast Alina Kabaeva.

The statements of the Russian president did not directly refer to the magnitude of losses suffered by Russian troops in its invasion of Ukraine.

The ongoing war is entering its second winter and has forced Putin to order partial mobilizationwith Russian media reporting since September that Moscow aimed to mobilize up to one million reservists.

Earlier this month, the UK Ministry of Defense said that the number of dead Russian soldiers in Ukraine probably exceeded 300,000.

The British ministry also said that thousands of corpses had been abandoned on the battlefield.

The invasion also led to an estimated 820,000-920,000 people fleeing Russiaaccording to the independent policy group Re:Russia.

Other harmful effects Russia is facing due to the invasion include severe labor shortages and the growing economic slowdown caused by Western sanctions.

Russia is witnessing a declining birth rate since before the breakup of the Soviet Union. Experts attribute this decline to the worsening economy and strict abortion regulations acting as a deterrent to would-be parents.

The Russian president has sought to boost the country’s rising birth rate by implementing various government incentives for people with children, including financial rewards for families with more than one child, since he took office 24 years ago.