Since the first mobilization for war, the Russian Association of Physicians and Gynecologists had reported that the demand for the procedure of preserving one’s own genetic material had greatly increased. Proekt Veter collected the stories of the wives of soldiers who died at the front and who, despite this, became pregnant with assisted fertilization after their death.
Moscow () – Despite the incessant calls from the Russian authorities to fight against the decline in the birth rate and generate new children, the population seems quite insensitive and the rates are not increasing as they should. There is, however, a category that does not want to give up having children, in the drama of the war in Ukraine: they are the wives of Russian soldiers sent to the front and who lost their lives, leaving behind their frozen sperm. Journalist Irina Kravtsova, from Proekt Veter, collected their testimonies, discovering the mission of mothers who can give meaning even to destroyed lives.
Already in 2022, after the first call for mobilization for war, the association of doctors and gynecologists reported that the demand for the procedure of preserving one’s own genetic material had greatly increased. Especially in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, where the Clinical Institute of Reproductive Medicine operates, men leaving for war were offered to freeze their sperm and entrust it for safekeeping, and there was a huge turnout for this offer. Now the possibility of this operation is regularly echoed in all regions of Russia, supported by central and regional authorities to “minimize demographic losses.”
An economist at the State University of Buryatia, Nikolaj Atanov, affirms that this is the best measure to support birth rates, and that the State should assume all expenses “from semen collection to the coming of age of the children of the fallen.” Furthermore, the offspring of the “war heroes” should have access to specialized educational institutions for their effective integration into the world of work. It is difficult to estimate how many men left for the front who left biological material frozen, and how many women became pregnant as a result of this possibility, although some cases have been reported publicly, and Kravtsova has collected their stories.
Lieutenant Evgenij Anufriev, 31, returned from Ukraine in his coffin on his birthday, June 11, 2022, to the small town of Kjakhta in Buryatia, where he had lived with his family. According to local custom, the body had to spend a night at home before being buried, but Evgenij’s companions did not give the coffin to his wife, because the body had deteriorated greatly, since it had been in mud and worms for a long time. in addition to fatal injuries. His widow Olga had had a daughter, Sofía, with him in 2018 through artificial insemination, after many failed attempts, and there were two good quality embryos left, which remained frozen in the clinic. For this reason, the couple paid an amount of three thousand rubles a month (about 30 euros), and in 2021 they signed up to have another child, and then Olga immediately underwent surgery as soon as she received the news of Evgenij’s death. , also on the advice of a Buddhist lama who had assured her that “your husband will be reborn as a child.” On June 7, 2023, the anniversary of her father’s death, little Evgenija was born, and her mother, Olga, declared that “if she had not given birth to this child, she would not have survived the pain.”
Kravtsova relates many other similar stories, such as that of Anna, a 27-year-old history student, and Dmitry Serikov, a 29-year-old mechanic from the Siberian city of Surgut, who married during the summer of 2021. The call to arms came in September 2023, and in February 2024, Dmitry was injured, obtaining permission to return home for a couple of weeks through a large bribe to the commanding officer, just when free freezing of semen began to be systematically proposed. Anna says that she and her husband had not yet decided to have children, but they accepted the proposal “just in case.” Back at the front, in July Dmitry died in a mine explosion, and speaking with her mother Elena, Anna decided that “we should have a child”, despite the advice of her friends, who advised her to wait for her next husband. , given his still young age. While pregnant, she began a new relationship with a man rejected for military service, and together they welcomed the new baby, Dmitry. In the maelstrom of war and the loss of the future, even in Russia life can be reborn.
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