I think this is all that needs to be said on these articles.
(There's a lot more that _could_ be said, such as how few actual birthing HN readers there are, but I think the economics is really simple at the root of it.)
Besides, even the countries with really the worst outlook and conditions aren't falling all that fast. Russia since the high point of the 1990s: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/russia-popula...
More relevant is something like Japan. [2] They are currently losing 1 in every 200 people, every year. And that rate of decline is still accelerating. And they have a similar fertility rate to Finland 1.37 vs 1.42. The only difference is that Japan has had its low fertility rate for longer, and so it's closer to the equilibrium rate of loss that such a fertility rate implies, while Finland is closer to their older higher fertility rates.
[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/fertility-r...
[2] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/JPN/japan/population
Russia has lower fertility rate than EU average, at 1.50 vs 1.53. And a higher and faster growing share of Muslim population than Europe.
Overall, death rate is about 1.37x more than birth rate in Russia (999.14 vs 728.02 per 100K in first 10 months of 2023 - link to official stats https://statprivat.ru/demo2020?r=3). In EU it's 10.7 vs 9.5 per 1000 (in a full year), so only 1.12x the difference. Births are 8% lower per 1000 and deaths, 12% higher. Plus, Russia has a higher proportion of Muslim population than any EU country and it grows faster too, so for white population situation is beyond dire: in ethnic Russian majority regions apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, death rate at 2.5-3x the birth rate is the norm.
If you've been under impression that Russia somehow has some sound demographic policy and/or family culture and is doing better in this respect than any European country, you're just a victim of Putin's propaganda. Compared to EU states, Russia is only better than Bulgaria in this respect.
That said, your analysis is a bit misleading. Because while deaths/births are ultimately what fertility comes down to, it's a long lagging result. Taken to extremes, if a country of 20 year olds had a rapid extinction level fertility rate of 0.1, births would still far outpace deaths for many decades. Vice versa if there was a country made up of mostly of the elderly and then a small number of high fertility youth, deaths would outpace births for many years - in spite of [now] healthy demographics.
So fertility is what matters. And no, I don't think Russia is the epitome of what we should do. They have endless problems including alcohol abuse, a hugely imbalanced sex ratio, high suicide rates, and more. But I do think they're working to solve their problems in a way that is likely to create a better and more sustainable future for themselves. By contrast much of the Western world today seems content to behave in a generally myopic and reactionary fashion. Even in this very thread you see some people positive about lower fertility rates because climate. It's like seeing your house burning down and being happy that you won't have to fix that leaking sink anymore.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033851/fertility-rate-r...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Ru... (the data is copied from https://fedstat.ru/indicator/31517# - Federal Statistics service of Russia - but it's closed for access from outside).
1.42 is worse than in 20 out of 27 EU countries and worse than in EU overall (1.53). With much lower readings in Russian-populated regions, i.e. it hangs on Muslims. Of which Russia has more and they grow faster than in any EU country. Some almost purely Russian-population regions rival South Korea in low fertility with <1.0 readings. Probably fertility of Russians themselves is under 1.0 in all regions except Moscow.
Not sure why you are trying to find something good where it simply isn't.