Erectile dysfunction pill sales surge in Russia – with young men suffering extreme stress

Demand for potency pills in Russia has soared due to stress linked to Vladimir Putin’s war, a new study suggests.

Spending on drugs to combat erectile dysfunction rose 75 per cent year on year, according to the Centre for the Development of Advanced Technologies in Moscow.

The hike in July to September last year was 19 per cent up on the previous quarter. In the first quarter of 2023 this increased to 40 per cent.

The study also revealed Russian spending on contraceptive products also slumped over the same period.  

The findings coincide with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine with demand especially high among residents in wealthier postcodes for example Moscow, Moscow region and St Petersburg.

‘On average, there were 392 packs of such drugs per thousand adult men living in Russia in the first quarter of 2023,’ noted Chestny Znak analysts.

Erectile dysfunction is becoming more common among younger men – those most vulnerable to being called up as cannon fodder for Putin’s war against Ukraine.

The rise in use of such drugs comes despite a ‘blow below the belt’ to Putin with a February announcement that supplies of Viagra tablets were suspended to Russia.

‘Viatris LLC informed us about the suspension of the supply of the Viagra drug in the dosage form of a tablet,’ the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade said, reported Interfax.

Yet this triggered a 50 per cent increase in sales of the potency-enhancing drug, said Chestny Znak. There was no chance of couples being let down by a lack of supplies.

‘Available stocks are sufficient to meet the current level of demand for eight months,’ explained state news agency TASS.

‘During this time, suppliers of equivalent drugs can increase the volume of supplies and replace Viagra in Russian pharmacies with their products.’

There are also signs that Viagra and other similar Western drugs are reaching Russia via other countries including Kazakhstan and China.

The dictator himself is believed to favour another method of boosting potency, after being introduced to blood baths by his defence minister Sergei Shoigu, a Siberian native.

Putin is reported to have fathered children with lover Alina Kabaeva, 39, in 2015 and 2019 – and some accounts say there are more children.

Rather than a little blue pill, this method involves bathing in a bath of moral deer blood gathered when the animals’ antlers are severed in Siberia.

Putin is reported to have fathered children with lover Alina Kabaeva (pictured in 2005), 39, in 2015 and 2019 – and some accounts say there are more children

Rather than a little blue pill, this method involves bathing in a bath of moral deer blood gathered when the animals’ antlers are severed in Siberia

Animal welfare experts have slammed the ‘barbarian’ way antlers are sawn off terrified Siberian stags.

The ancient tradition is seen as a testosterone-driven elixir to improve male potency, but also as bringing multiple health benefits.

There is also a theory it slows aging in women, but there is lack of medical evidence as a cure for ailments.

Shocking video and pictures highlight the terror and anguish of the Maral deer as an electric saw is used with no anaesthetic to cut off their magnificent velvet antlers, made from fast-growing bone at a breeding station in Russia’s Altai Mountains.

The cutters swig the blood which they see as a ‘natural Viagra’. Observers say the creatures are ‘bewildered’ and ‘shellshocked’, their eyes ‘bulging with fright’.

The beasts are herded into a special cutting chamber where a press ‘closes in on the stag from each side, while the floor lowers, so the deer is left in suspended animation’, said one account.

The stags are ‘thrust into a ledge as if condemned to the guillotine, its hooves flailing but unable to touch the ground’.

Irina Novozhilova, president of Russian Animal Protection Centre ‘Vita’, said the method was ‘totally abnormal’.

‘Blood baths. This is manipulating nature, without any sense,’ she said.

‘It is a pure example of a cruel attitude to animals.’

She suggested the process was medieval, saying: ‘It is strange that we are discussing this matter in the 21st century, because the faith in the effectiveness of this medicine made from antlers comes from ancient times.’