People walk in Red Square near the State Historical Museum and the Kremlin wall in central Moscow, Russia September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/File Photo
(Reuters) - The Russian parliament is working on a law that would ban what the authorities cast as the harmful promotion of a child-free way of life with heavy fines for "childlessness propaganda", a close ally of President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said parliamentarians had begun to examine legislation to outlaw what he described as propaganda on the internet, in films, in advertising and in the media that encourages "a conscious refusal to have children".
