Putin's war in Ukraine is driving Russians to alcohol
Russia had been sobering up for years until the pandemic and then the war hit (Picture: Getty)
Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine are driving his fellow Russians to addiction.
The number of people with alcohol addiction and alcoholic psychoses has started to grow in Russia – for the first time in 10 years – as the war nears the start of its third year.
Face unshaven, nose and cheeks rosy red, clutching a bottle of vodka or homemade hooch, and mumbling ‘Na Zdorovie‘ – this has been the stereotype of Russian men abroad for many years.
People there already consumed more than citizens of most other countries, but Russia had been sobering up since the early 2000s – until now.
Under former president Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin had repeatedly tried to fix the nation’s alcohol issues.
A series of alcohol-control measures were introduced, including a ban on street-drinking and advertising restrictions – and they were largely successful until the war.
Young men walk in front of a billboard promoting contract army service with an image of a serviceman and the slogan reading ‘Serving Russia is a real job’ in St Petersburg (Picture: AFP)
A growing problem
Rosstat recorded that in 2022, more than 54,000 patients were newly diagnosed with alcohol dependence, an increase from 53,000 the year before.
Experts attribute this rollback to the Covid pandemic, socio-economic upheavals and ‘intensifying geopolitical confrontations’.
‘There is nothing to be surprised at here,’ Svetlana Gordeeva, associate professor of the Department of Sociology at Perm University, told Sibreal.
‘Alcohol consumption increases during any crisis, be it a pandemic or another global economic crisis, and at the same time the number of alcoholic psychoses increases.’
Russian reservists recruited during a partial mobilisation of troops (Picture: Reuters)
The consequences of war
A narcologist, who wishes to remain anonymous, said Putin’s war has also made a huge contribution to the increase in alcohol consumption.
‘When mobilisation was announced, the sharpest increase in the number of alcoholic psychoses was observed in those places where those mobilised were kept for three to six months while waiting to be sent to the front,’ he said.
‘Relatives of those who were mobilised came to me and told me that vodka was brought there in boxes, no one controlled the sale, and people drank themselves into psychosis there.
‘I don’t think that these cases were reflected in official statistics, but it cannot be ruled out that they were found.
‘If this is so, then we probably received about a thousand new cases from these mobilised camps.’
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