Since the invasion of Ukraine, there has been a 20-fold jump in diagnoses in the armed forces, showing ‘HIV is not just passed on in war through wounds and their treatment’
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These high transmission rates show “HIV is not just passed on in war through wounds and their treatment”, a report in Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Centre said.
Unprotected sex and Sharing needles to inject drugs are “thriving in a fighting army of men who live every day as if it were their last”.
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Russia has long battled with high rates of HIV among the general population; it ranks among the top five countries with the highest rates of infections.
There are more than 1.1 million registered HIV cases, but some estimate the true number could exceed 1.5 million due to underdiagnosis and patchy data.
Figures from the UNAids agency show that Russia accounted for nearly 4 per cent of global HIV infections in 2021, despite having less than 2 per cent of the world’s population.
Vadim Pokrovsky, the head of Russia’s Federal Methodological Centre for HIV/Aids Prevention, said in December that about 30,000 Russians of working age died annually from HIV.
Most deaths occur among people aged 25 to 50, adding extra pressure to the country’s shrinking labour force.
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Exiled Russian media outlets report that in [Russian-]occupied regions of Ukraine, such as Kherson, HIV care and testing have nearly collapsed.
Stigma, disinformation and discriminatory laws are also driving Russians away from testing and treatment, charities say. This includes the “foreign agents” law, which has forced many HIV prevention groups that receive funding from overseas to shut down or scale back their work.
In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT movement” as extremist, further deterring gay men, as an at-risk group, from accessing support services.
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**Moscow’s growing influence in eastern Europe and Central Asia has also led to the closure of harm-reduction programmes in neighbouring states, **prompting warnings from the UN that Russia’s policies are aggravating the regional HIV epidemic.
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