BSP-29 Kremlin says Russian women will make own dating choices during World Cup

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Kremlin says Russian women will make own dating choices during World Cup

MOSCOW, June 14, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The Kremlin on Thursday rejected
suggestions from a senior lawmaker that Russian women should not have sex
with visiting World Cup fans, saying they would make up their own minds.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted to comments on
Wednesday by 70-year-old Communist lawmaker Tamara Pletneva warning that
football-fuelled flings with fans could leave Russian women raising children
“of another race”.

While saying the matter “was out of the Kremlin’s remit,” Peskov pointed
out to journalists that FIFA’s slogan on World Cup FAN IDs is “Say no to
racism”.

“Russian women can probably manage their own affairs. They are the best
women in the world,” he added.

Pletneva, who leads the lower house of parliament’s family, women and
children committee, told a local radio station she hoped women would not date
visiting fans and get pregnant.

The World Cup hosted by Russia could mean “there will be young women who
meet someone and then give birth… I hope not,” she said.

She compared the situation to the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow, which led
to some local women having then-unusual relationships with foreigners and
falling pregnant.

Asked if the World Cup could boost Russia’s birth rate — a key goal for
Putin — Pletneva replied: “We should be giving birth to our own children.”

Children who are mixed-race are likely to be brought up in one-parent
families, she warned.

“It’s the children who suffer… and have suffered since the Soviet era.
It’s lucky if they’re the same race (as the mother) but if they’re of another
race, it’s worse,” she said, adding “I’m not a nationalist”.

She said that children risked being “abandoned and just left with their
mother” or alternatively being taken abroad by their fathers, urging women to
marry “Russian citizens”.

Pletneva previously criticised the #MeToo campaign against sexual
harassment, tentatively spreading in Russia.

“We’re not in America or Europe. Why should we copy everything? If a woman
doesn’t want it, no one is going to harass her,” she told Gazeta.ru news site
in February.

BSS/AFP/RY/1830 hrs