In a move drawing condemnation from rights groups and observers across Europe, a regional government in Russia has approved direct cash payments to school-age girls who become pregnant. The policy, introduced in the Oryol region, offers £950 (approximately $1,200) to teen mothers as part of a broader pro-natalist campaign to counteract Russia’s demographic collapse, intensified by its war in Ukraine.

Governor Andrei Klychkov announced that the new initiative expands existing student maternity support to now include schoolgirls—not just university students. Critics argue this is an open incentive for underage pregnancy disguised as economic aid. Oryol has among the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country, and the new policy is seen by many as both exploitative and reckless.

Klychkov defended the measure as “pro-family” and essential to protecting mothers and children. “We must ensure their well-being and preserve every life,” he said. But public health experts warn it could backfire, leading to unsafe pregnancies, school dropouts, and long-term poverty for minors drawn in by the cash reward.

This is not an isolated push. Russia’s federal government has increasingly embraced coercive natalist policies. Media programming has been reshaped to promote teen motherhood, including a state-funded rebrand of the show Pregnant at 16. Meanwhile, lawmakers have advanced bills to criminalize what they call “childfree propaganda,” part of a cultural crackdown on reproductive autonomy.

The Kremlin has framed population decline as a national emergency. Russia’s war in Ukraine has further devastated its birthrate, with tens of thousands of men killed or exiled. That loss, combined with economic hardship and rising emigration, has pushed the government toward increasingly authoritarian pro-birth policies.

The Oryol program is the first known instance of a state explicitly incentivizing schoolgirls to give birth. The implications are chilling: a country unable to maintain its population through freedom now turns to financial coercion aimed at its youngest citizens.

International observers have called for scrutiny of the program under international child protection conventions. But inside Russia, dissent is quiet—and becoming criminal.

The war abroad is shaping lives at home. And now, those lives may start in a cradle subsidized by the state.