Between vulgar war propaganda and verbal demonstrations of military strength, Vladimir Putin also found some space to talk about health in his speech to the nation. And to do this he dusted off an old Russian saying: “Stop drinking, get on skis!” The Kremlin leader declared that life expectancy in Russia has reached 73 years (in Italy in 2020 it was 82.4 years) and has set the goal of reaching 78 years by 2030. The bloody invasion of However, Ukraine, unleashed by the Russian dictator, certainly does not favor the achievement of this goal. It is not known exactly how many Russian soldiers died in this war, each of the belligerent forces in fact tends to reduce its own losses and inflate those of the other side. The US for its part claims that 60,000 Russian soldiers have lost their lives in Ukraine, but there is no confirmation of this number either.
But with his “Stop drinking, get on skis!” Putin perhaps also had other numbers in mind. According to data from the Russian national statistics agency Rosstat published last December and cited by the newspaper Kommersant, an increase in alcohol addiction was recorded in Russia in 2022 for the first time in ten years. Between 2010 and 2021, new diagnoses of alcohol consumption disorders fell from 153,900 to 53,300: an important positive trend which, however, came to a halt in 2022, when diagnoses rose to 54,200.
Meanwhile, Putin – according to what Tass reports – has promised that from next year those who undergo regular medical examinations and respect the parameters of the “Gto” physical education tests (which date back to the 1930s) will be entitled to benefits tax. “You will remember the popular motto, everyone remembers this joke: stop drinking and get on skis!”, declared the dictator.