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A Russian missile strike has destroyed $2.6m (£1.9m) worth of HIV prevention supplies in Ukraine, according to an international aid group.
The Alliance for Public Health said the attack on Sunday night near Kyiv hit a warehouse holding 62 million prevention items earmarked for Ukraine’s harm reduction programmes next year. It includes syringes, needles, alcohol wipes, and condoms intended to support more than 300,000 people.
“This is not just another strike. It is an attack on 300,000 Ukrainians who depend on HIV prevention services and on their fundamental right to health,” said Andriy Klepikov, executive director of the Alliance for Public Health.
Efforts to prevent the spread of HIV rely heavily on harm reduction programmes that supply sterile syringes and needles to people who inject drugs, alongside condoms and other supplies that help curb sexual transmission.
Mr Klepikov said the destruction of the warehouse would not immediately disrupt services, because his organisation had moved its supplies for the rest of the year out of central storage and into regional distribution centres several weeks ago as part of contingency planning.
“Russia failed,” he said, adding that the Alliance had notified international partners and appealed for urgent support to rebuild next year’s inventory.
Ukraine has long had one of the highest HIV burdens in Europe. Some 240,000 people are living with HIV in the country, with nearly 119,000 patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to UN Aids.
The country’s HIV response faces mounting funding pressures.
Last year, UN Aids warned that Ukraine had a funding gap of $1.9 million for procuring 30,000 three-month ART courses needed to sustain treatment, after the Trump administration froze US foreign aid assistance.
Ukraine’s HIV epidemic escalated in the 1990s.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in December 1991, economic instability and widespread poverty triggered a dramatic rise in intravenous drug use, with shared needles causing a rapid rise in viral transmission.
Between 2010 and 2021, however, Ukraine made massive strides, reducing new HIV infections by nearly 60 per cent and AIDS-related deaths by 70 per cent as it rolled out scaled-up harm reduction programmes such as needle exchanges.
But Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has brought severe disruption to Ukraine’s public health system.
In 2022, over 10 per cent of new HIV diagnoses in the EU were among displaced Ukrainians seeking continued care.
In eastern and southern Russian occupied territories, data collection, harm reduction programmes, and testing services have been curtailed or banned outright.
Russia is grappling with its own severe HIV epidemic, which experts say has been exacerbated by the war.
In the first year of the conflict, recorded HIV incidence among military personnel rose more than 40 times, according to Russian defence ministry data.
Last year, Ukrainian military sources told The Telegraph that Russia had formed units comprising soldiers with HIV and other infectious diseases and deployed them to the frontlines around Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in eastern Ukraine.
The reports followed earlier accounts that the Wagner mercenary group recruited prisoners with HIV and hepatitis for frontline roles in 2022, with access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) reportedly offered as an incentive for recruits.
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