World famous pharmaceutical companies that continue to operate in Russia have replenished the budget of the aggressor country by $339 million over the past year .
For example, such giants as B. Braun, Gedeon Richter, Sun Pharma, Abbott, Servier and Egis, Stada, Krka, Menarini Group and others. These data are emphasized by the journalists of the domestic edition, analyzing the current situation in the pharmaceutical market after the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine.
“With this money, Russia purchased 339,000 shells for a 122-millimeter cannon, or 3,556 Smerch missiles, or 39 Caliber cruise missiles, or 23 Su-25 attack aircraft, or any other weapon that the occupiers continue to kill Ukrainians with,” writes the publication with reference to data published earlier by the Center for Counteracting Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council.
In this situation, Ukraine, as of the end of 2022, is the only country that has imposed sanctions against medicines partially or wholly produced in Russia and Belarus. Thus, in May of this year, amendments were made to the Law “On Medicines”, according to which, during martial law, the Ministry of Health can terminate registration certificates for drugs whose manufacturers carry out direct or indirect activities for the production of medicines in Russia or Belarus .
The logic of Ukrainian legislators is quite clear – global pharmaceutical companies must either leave Russia or Ukraine, the article explains.
As noted, “global pharmaceuticals are close to leaving Russia,” so now companies need to be afraid to leave from this market not the first, but the last. However, they do not want to lose investments and investments in the advertising of their drugs, so they will hold on as long as they can.
As for the exit from the Ukrainian market of drugs, the manufacturers of which carry out direct or indirect activities for the production of drugs on the territory of the state -aggressor or Belarus, then a critical situation will not happen because of this. The fact is that, according to the updated law, the ban is not applicable when there are no two analogues for medicines.
So, for example, in October 2022, the Commission of the Ministry of Health for the first time applied the provisions of the law against 35 drugs of the Hungarian company Gedeon Richter . For most of the 35 drugs on the Ukrainian market, there are much more substitutes than two. For example, in Ukraine there are 23 analogues of Normadipin and 34 Mertenil.
