By Galina Korol | 2025-07-23

"Quit drinking and start skiing," President Vladimir Putin told Russians in a recent address to parliament. But instead of hitting the slopes, they are hitting the bottle, and the vodka is running low.

Despite the president's previous claim that the country is becoming more sober, Russians are consuming more hard liquor than at any point in the past eight years. Drinkers are increasingly turning to rum, whiskey, brandy and tequila.

According to a July 9 report by POLITICO, sales of these spirits rose 10.2% in the past year, reaching 3.2 liters per person annually. In some regions, these imported liquors even outsold Putinka, a Russian vodka brand.

Yet production data tell a conflicting story. In the first half of 2025, hard liquor production fell by more than 16%, according to Russia's Federal Service for Alcohol Market Regulation. Vodka production alone dropped 10.9% year over year -- from 33.4 million decaliters in 2024 to 31.38 million in the same period this year.

So how can alcohol consumption be on the rise while production is in retreat?

The invisible flow of alcohol

A significant portion of alcohol no longer goes into bottling for human consumption, say analysts. Instead, the military-industrial complex is absorbing it. Ethanol, a key component not only in liquor but in certain military applications, reportedly figures in the production of drones, missiles and other equipment under defense contracts.

In this light, the decline in official alcohol output may be less a sign of sobriety than a symptom of redistribution. Distilleries, though ostensibly civilian enterprises, have long operated with a wartime posture. What disappears from the legal market may not vanish altogether; it simply reappears elsewhere -- in underground stills or embedded in weaponry.

"Russia's military industry and aviation consume more than 10 million liters of alcohol per year," Mykhailo Prytula, a military analyst and reservist colonel in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), told Kontur.

Distilleries do not produce weapons themselves but supply a key component used at defense plants, he said.

Russia does not publish data on military alcohol use, and Kontur was unable to verify Prytula's estimate. The figures are based on calculations that any analyst familiar with the basics of counterintelligence could produce, he said.

The currency of war

A handful of major ethanol producers in Russia make both potable and denatured alcohol. Denatured alcohol -- once seen as secondary -- now plays a critical role in the country's war machine, say observers.

Denatured alcohol is widely used across aviation, aerospace and military manufacturing, aviation specialist Bogdan Dolintse told Kontur. It appears in antifreeze for tanks and aircraft, in explosives and in rocket fuel components.

"That includes ingredients of antifreeze for tanks, armored personnel carriers and aircraft, as well as explosive compounds and ingredients of rocket propellant," he said.

According to Prytula, a single MiG-31K mission uses about 200 liters of denatured alcohol, while a MiG-25 may require up to 250. Each Kinzhal missile contains at least 200 liters, and Shahed drones consume 10 to 30 liters apiece, he said. Other combat aircraft use 120 to 150 liters per mission.

Alcohol is "a key element" in the electronic warfare industry, said Pavlo Lakiychuk, director of security programs at the Strategy XXI Center for Global Studies.

"A repair and maintenance group in one signals intelligence center uses about 30 to 50kg of alcohol per month," he told Kontur.

Alcohol functions as an informal currency within the military-industrial complex, easing cooperation between technical units, said Lakiychuk.

"Whoever is in the technological units where alcohol is needed can resolve any issues with all the others," he said.

Alcohol's strategic role

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian distilleries suggest that alcohol has become a strategic resource in the war. Since last October, drones have repeatedly targeted such facilities, including a strike on October 27 that hit the Ethanol Spirit distillery in Voronezh province, the second attack on the site in a week, according to BBC's Ukrainian service.

A similar strike occurred in neighboring Anninsky district, possibly targeting a distillery or oil terminal.

On October 22, waves of drones hit facilities in Tula, Tambov and Voronezh provinces. Some of the sites, like Biochem in Tambov, are not just alcohol producers but openly supply materials to the defense industry.

While such attacks will not end the war, war watchers say they disrupt production, delay repairs and strain supply chains.

"Striking facilities like these is always useful because it helps make it harder for Russia to continue the war. This is a strategy of death by a thousand cuts -- striking in stages," Dolintse said, meaning that over the long term these actions affect the capabilities of the entire military-industrial complex.

A deeper impact would come from hitting more-sensitive infrastructure, said Prytula.

To achieve that, Ukraine must target "truly vulnerable" components like fermentation tanks and electric columns.

"Air defense systems generally don't protect these components much, and they burn better than oil terminals," Prytula said.

A "total alcohol shortage" could be more damaging than a fuel crisis.

"A sober Russia is ... a catastrophe for the Kremlin. It would have psychological, political, military and technological consequences," he said.