When Timothy Ash travelled around the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, he met young veterans who had returned from the war in Afghanistan. They were psychologically broken – and drunk.

“They were pretty f---ed up, a lot of them,” says Ash, now associate fellow at Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia programme.

One night in Volgograd, in southern Russia, Ash met a man in his mid-20s who had fought in Afghanistan. “He got absolutely blasted, drunk as hell. Something was not right with the kid. He ended up getting attacked by a group of youths because he’d gotten so drunk.

“He got beaten to a pulp. I had to drag him out.”

Russia has a long history with alcoholism. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, drinking was in decline.

Now, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, official figures show alcohol addiction is surging again for the first time in a decade.

Vodka sales this year surged to a record high and policymakers are scrambling to halt a rise in alcohol-related deaths.

Georgy Filimonov, the firebrand governor of Vologda, a region north of Moscow, has just passed laws restricting alcohol sales to two hours a day on weekdays, which will come into effect in March, after 7500 people in his region died because of drinking in the last year.

”This is cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, cardiomyopathy, stabbings, shootings, drunk-driving,“ Filimonov told Russian newspaper Kommersant in October.

“This year, according to official statistics alone, the incidence of alcoholism has increased by 30 per cent. Seventy-one per cent of deaths among our able-bodied citizens are related to alcohol.”

Filimonov will not say why.

“Something is going wrong,” says Ash. “You had a period where you saw declining alcoholism in Russia. Now we are going the other way.”

What has changed is the war. Broadly speaking, the country’s economy is holding up. High demand from the army means Russia is close to full employment and, although much trade has been sanctioned, the Kremlin has been able to substitute most goods.

But underneath all of this, it is becoming increasingly clear that the fabric of Russian society is falling apart.

As in the 1980s, Russian soldiers are returning from the frontline wounded and traumatised. Thousands more are dying, leaving grieving families at home.

But what is happening today is on a completely different scale. About 15,000 Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan. The Russian death toll in Ukraine is at least eight times that already.

Between February 24, 2022, and November 19 this year, there have been at least 120,000 Russian military deaths in the war in Ukraine, according to analysis of probate records by Mediazona, a site that works in collaboration with BBC’s Russian service.

As many as 728,000 more have been injured, according to analysis by The Economist, based on leaked documents from the US Defence Department. That means about 2 per cent of all Russian men aged between 20 and 50 have been killed or severely wounded.

“Russia will have to come to terms with this. A whole generation of youth has been lost in Ukraine,” says Ash.

These men are not spread equally across the country. Mobilisation has been heavily weighted to rural areas in the south and east. These are the places where alcohol consumption has been rising the fastest, according to an analysis by Olha Zadorozhna, assistant professor of economics at Kozminski University.

The steepest jumps of all of Russia’s 86 regions were in Ingushetia and Karachay-Cherkessia. In these two regions on Russia’s southern border with Europe, the consumption of vodka and brandy surged by 25 per cent in 2022, according to Zadorozhna’s analysis.

Rising alcohol consumption is also heavily concentrated in rural areas that have particularly low incomes, she says.

Nationally, vodka sales hit their highest level since records began in the first 10 months of 2024, according to alcohol regulator Rosalkogoltobakkontrol. Total alcohol sales rose to a seven-year high of 1.84 billion litres.

The new surge in drinking is taking a clear toll on public health. Between 2010 and 2021, the number of patients with a first-time diagnosis of alcohol dependence plunged from 153,900 to 53,300, according to data from official statistics agency Rosstat, published in Kommersant. But in 2022, this trend went into reverse, the figure rising to 54,200.

Filimonov’s regional campaign has sparked weeks of intense discussion across Russian media and Telegram channels.

At the end of October, State Duma deputy Sultan Khamzaev proposed rolling out similar restrictions across the country. “I am in favour of limiting the sale of alcohol. First to five hours a day, then to two,” he told Russian news outlets.

At face value, Filimonov’s campaign against heavy drinking seems in stark contrast to the Russian government’s typical approach.

“Historically, during the USSR, Russia used alcohol to control the population,” says Zadorozhna. “In the 1960s, actually people spent twice as much on alcohol as on meat. When you drink a lot, your memory deteriorates, it affects your long-term planning. People just don’t think about the future that much.”

When President Vladimir Putin met mothers of deceased soldiers in 2022, he told them it was better that their sons died fighting in Ukraine than if they had died from drinking at home.

“It is kind of part of the strategy to make people go and fight,” says Zadorozhna.

She is sceptical of Filimonov’s motives. Drinking is still everywhere in pop culture in Russia and it is cheap. A litre of vodka costs just £2.18 ($4.26). Banning alcohol sales during certain hours does not stop people from buying alcohol, but it will make them feel more ashamed about it, says Zadorozhna.

“There is a psychological effect, people feel guilty for consuming alcohol. People who have these feelings of discontent and guilt may be easily manipulated. Definitely alcohol is a way to control the population.”

Filimonov insists he has a different reason – one that also tells a story about the toll of the war in a different way. He wants to tackle Russia’s shrinking population.

Russia’s birth rate hit a 25-year low in the first six months of this year – a statistic that the Kremlin’s press secretary said was “catastrophic for the future of the nation”.

It is a demographic crisis that will only get worse as the war casualties continue to mount.

Curbing alcohol sales will not only mean fewer deaths but more births, Filimonov argues. He has pointed to Chechnya, where alcohol sales are restricted and the birth rate is the highest in Russia.

He told Kommersant that his measures mean the birth rate in Vologda will rise “by 1.5 to two times” in five years.

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Whatever policymakers’ motives for restricting alcohol sales, they are not addressing the root causes: the war.

“It is going to be a scar on Russian society for an awfully long time,” says Ash. “And they’re unlikely to win an actual decisive victory.

”If you suffer war losses but you’ve won the war, it feels a bit different. [If you lose] It’s like Vietnam or Iraq war veterans. People ask ‘why the hell did we do that?’”

The Telegraph, London

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