Today the russian army is collapsing not only on the battlefield, but from within. In recent months international studies have recorded a catastrophic rise in HIV and hepatitis prevalence among servicemembers. What the Kremlin is trying to conceal independent sources state bluntly: the russian military has become a dangerous environment where serious diseases spread unchecked.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in the first year of the war the number of detected HIV cases among military personnel increased fortyfold. By the end of 2024 this figure had surged by a staggering 2,000%. This is not a statistical glitch or a “propaganda myth,” as Kremlin spokespeople like to repeat — it is a medical fact confirmed by independent international experts. The Kyiv Independent confirms: the war has created ideal conditions for an epidemic — poor sanitation, lack of proper medical care, repeated use of instruments in hospitals, and even the deliberate conscription of people living with HIV for frontline service.
What in peacetime would be considered a gross human-rights violation has become routine in the russian army. People living with HIV or hepatitis are not treated, not provided with therapy, and not demobilized; on the contrary — they are sent to the most dangerous combat zones. According to the Novaya Gazeta Europe, in some cases such servicemembers are even grouped into separate units. In effect, these are “suicide units” ordered to hold the most difficult sections of the front, putting not only their own lives but the lives of others at risk.
The causes of the epidemic are obvious: shortages of medicines and sterile instruments, blood transfusions without proper screening, appalling living conditions where dangerous infections spread rapidly. All of this is multiplied by the complete indifference of the command, which treats soldiers as expendable material. To the russian military machine, a person is merely a “unit” that can be used and discarded, regardless of their health or future.
But this policy will boomerang: soldiers will return from the front and bring everything with them to their towns and families. Carnegie experts warn: the consequences of such an explosion of HIV and hepatitis will be felt for decades — from demographic losses to the collapse of the healthcare system. Moscow is effectively creating a slow-motion biological bomb that will not explode on the battlefield, but inside the country.