Due to the inaction of the Ministry of Health, led by Lyashko, pharmaceutical giants continue to finance the aggression of the Russian Federation,

The inconsistent position of the Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko has led to the fact that international pharmaceutical companies that have not left the Russian Federation and finance Russian military aggression with their taxes continue to work in Ukraine. RBC-Ukraine writes about it.

So, the companies KRKA (Slovenia), Servier (France), Berlin-Chemy (Germany), as well as partly the Hungarian Gedeon Richter, continue to sell their medicines in Ukraine without any restrictions. None of them left the Russian market.

“If you generalize in a straight line, then the taxes of European drug manufacturers go to Russia to produce weapons with the aim of killing Ukrainians,” the article says.

According to rough estimates, the Russian Federation could produce, for example, 320 X-22 missiles for a daily sum of taxes from the mentioned four companies.

The media recalled that at the beginning of the large-scale invasion, Lyashko appealed to international pharmaceutical companies to ignore Russia, not to do business with it and not to supply goods to it. However, the Ministry of Health did not even apply the existing legal mechanism against these companies.

In particular, in June 2022, amendments to the law came into force, which made it possible to limit the turnover of medicinal products, the production of which is located on the territory of the Russian Federation or Belarus. It is also allowed to cancel state registration if the applicant or his representative is directly or indirectly connected with Russian companies.

Since the adoption of the law, the restriction of the turnover of medicinal products related to the Russian Federation has been partially applied only against the Hungarian company Gedeon Richter.

According to the publication, KRKA organized a charitable donation of UAH 6 million ($150,000) for Ukrainian patients. However, this amount is almost a thousand times less than the taxes that KRKA paid in 2022 to the budget of the Russian Federation – 120.45 million dollars.

“The inconsistency of Minister Lyashko was clearly manifested in the case with Servier. At the beginning of the large-scale invasion, the minister told pharmaceutical companies that there could be no collusion with war criminals. But already in May 2023, Lyashko signed a Memorandum with the Mecenat Servier foundation mutual understanding,” the publication notes.

Thus, by its silence, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health becomes an accomplice to Russian aggression, although it has legal mechanisms that can push pharmaceutical giants to leave the Russian Federation, the publication states.