Russia's birth rate fell by 11 percent in 2017 to the lowest level in a decade, the government's statistics agency said Monday. Last year 1.9 million babies were born in Russia - 203,000 fewer than 2016, according to figures published on agency Rosstat's website. It is the lowest number since 2007, when 1.61 million births were recorded.

The main cause of the drop is a decrease in the number of women of childbearing age, which President Vladimir Putin in November blamed on "overlapping deep demographic declines" triggered by the fall of the USSR in 1991. Putin, who has made improving the country's demography a priority, has announced new monthly handouts for the birth of a first child.

Russia's labour ministry in December said it expects the number of women of reproductive age to fall by 28 percent by 2035. Russia, home to 146.9 million people, has seen its population decrease by more than five million since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The country then plunged into a deep demographic crisis due to worsening living standards, an increasing death rate and falling birth rates.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2018