Laws that would outlaw "propaganda" discouraging Russians from having children were overwhelmingly approved on Thursday in the first of three readings in the lower house of parliament, Paralel.Az reports citing Reuters.

The legislation would ban materials on the internet, in the media and in advertising that are deemed to portray a child-free lifestyle as attractive, and subject the authors to fines.

President Vladimir Putin, who portrays Russia as a bastion of "traditional values" locked in an existential struggle with a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children to secure the demographic future of the country.

The issue has taken on greater urgency for the authorities after official data released last month showed that Russia's birth rate had slid to its lowest in a quarter of a century.

Meanwhile mortality rates are up, with no end in sight to Moscow's war in Ukraine where Russian soldiers, like their Ukrainian counterparts, are being killed and wounded in a grinding war of attrition. Official casualty numbers are a secret.

Deputy Duma speaker Anna Kuznetsova said earlier this month that the law was part of Russia's "national security strategy". It is being championed by Vyacheslav Volodin, a powerful Putin ally who is chairman of the lower house.

Volodin has accused what authorities have described as the "child-free movement" of devaluing the institution of family with an ideology that encourages a "conscious refusal to have children".

He has said, however, that the law is not about criminalising women who decide not to become mothers.