The article, published by Komsomolskaya Pravda, came ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin signing into law a new measure that will see offenders face fewer penalties.

Yaroslav Korobatov, a columnist for the paper, said: “For years, women who have been smacked around by their husbands have found solace in the rather hypocritical proverb, ‘If he beats you, it means he loves you!’

“However, a new scientific study is giving women with irascible husbands new grounds to be proud of their bruises, insofar as women who are beaten, biologists confirm, have a valuable advantage: they’re more likely to give birth to boys!”

The scientific study refers to research by Satoshi Kanazawa, a controversial evolutionary psychologist.

In 2005 Mr Kanazawa published an article titled ‘Violent men have more sons’, and three years later another titled ‘Why do some battered women stay?’, in which he stated women “may have been selected to tolerate a certain level of nonlethal violence in their mates”.

On the law itself; also from The Independent.