In Russia, the mortality rate of men at large is approximately three times higher than the mortality rate in prisons.

This was reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, referring to materials from a roundtable meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy, Censor.NET reports .

According to the SZRU, even though the mortality rate in Russian prisons is traditionally considered one of the highest in Europe , men outside the colonies die much more often. One of the main reasons for this is alcohol.

Materials prepared for a meeting of a Federation Council committee note that alcohol accounts for 70% of excess mortality among Russian men. It also states that alcohol abuse reduces their life expectancy by an average of 20 years.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, restrictions on alcohol sales, price increases, and social advertising have not had the expected effect. At the same time, the war against Ukraine, which the Russian authorities officially call a “special military operation,” has only worsened the situation.

According to the results of 2025, for the first time in the last five years, the number of new cases of alcohol addiction in Russia has sharply increased. If a year earlier 63.4 thousand new patients were registered, then last year – already over 83 thousand. At the same time, the share of repeated hospitalizations decreased from 27.2% to 16.7%.

The largest volumes of alcohol consumption, according to official statistics, are recorded in the depressed regions of the Russian Federation . In particular, in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug this figure is 18.2 liters of pure alcohol per person per year, in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast – 14.76 liters, in Chukotka – 14.17 liters. At the same time, the SZRU emphasizes, official statistics do not take into account moonshine and surrogate alcohol.

At the same time, Moscow unexpectedly found itself among the regions with the lowest level of official alcohol consumption – up to five liters of pure alcohol per person per year. The Foreign Intelligence Service explains this by the greater number of leisure opportunities and higher standard of living in the Russian capital compared to the depressed regions of the country. Джерело: https://censor.net/ua/n4012844

(c)UNIAN 2026