July 28, 2025
Russia’s HIV statistics and dynamics were far from encouraging long before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the war has dramatically worsened the situation. In the first year of the war, according to Defense Ministry data, the recorded incidence of HIV among military personnel soared by more than 40 times.
The demographic and economic losses Russia will suffer as a result of this outbreak will have repercussions for decades and may ultimately even exceed the damage it has sustained from its invasion of Ukraine.
The number of people living with HIV in Russia passed the 1 million mark back in 2016. That’s almost 1% of the population, or about 1.5-2% of working age people and does not include those who simply did not get tested.
Even at that stage, the epidemic could still have been brought under control. There is a vast accumulated experience of fighting HIV around the world. Had there been the political will, it would have been enough to increase the Health Ministry’s budget for tackling the spread of HIV and to introduce proven methods of prevention instead of relying on outdated and harmful ideas about family life and “moral staples.” But with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the situation in Russia has only gotten far worse.
Modern antiretroviral therapy (ART), which is prescribed to every person newly diagnosed with HIV for the rest of their life, is not cheap. Even before the war, only a few wealthy regions could afford to fully finance it for all who needed it. The Health Ministry tried to switch to cheaper domestic generics of Western drugs to cut the costs, but HIV organizations were already reporting disruptions in the availability of essential drugs even before the war. Now wartime priorities have exacerbated that problem. The proportion of HIV patients receiving treatment has now fallen below 50% in Russia for the first time in many years.
The wartime wave of repression against civil society proved to be the final nail in the coffin of Russia’s already weak system of assistance for people living with HIV. The Elton John Foundation, the world’s largest sponsor of NGOs working in the field of HIV, was declared an “undesirable organization,” forcing Russian organizations to stop any cooperation with it. Furthermore, the designation of LGBTQ+ people as an “extremist movement” has further increased the cross-stigma around both the gay community and the issue of HIV.
However, the greatest impact has been caused by the war itself. Epidemiologists say that the risks of HIV spreading at the front increase with blood transfusions and the reusing of syringes in field hospitals.
People who take ART every day are no longer infectious, but when soldiers are living in trenches in conditions of round-the-clock shelling, the uninterrupted supply and administration of ART is hardly realistic. Meanwhile, irregular treatment is even worse than no treatment at all, since it can cause the virus to become drug-resistant and get passed on in that new mutation.
Cool. Maybe we will be able to witness the extinction of the ruskies … the worst creatures that ever crawled this Earth.
It needs something like the Black Death that only affects russians.
I’m open to any deadly disease for the cockroaches. Better yet, a whole slew of diseases.
mafia land have their own solution to the problem. HIV sufferers are sent to the frontline. Problem solved.
Where they infect other cockroaches.