The kremlin’s aggressive policy has effectively cut russian patients off from modern pharmaceutical developments. After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, leading international companies withdrew from multicenter clinical trials in the rf.

The number of such studies in the country has fallen 20-fold, from 376 in 2021 to only 18 in 2024. These include medicines for the treatment of HIV, cancer, and other serious diseases, as well as innovative analogues of existing pharmacologic agents.

Although medicines are not formally subject to sanctions, it is impossible to bring a new medicament to the russian market without local testing. moscow does not recognize the results of international studies without the participation of its own doctors and patients. Previously, this allowed russians to gain access to innovations 3–4 years earlier.

Delays in participating in global studies have already had consequences: the  hepatitis C medicine – sofosbuvir, which was approved in the USA in 2013, became available in the rf  only in 2017, despite its almost 100 % effectiveness.

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