Death toll in Russia’s alcohol poisoning rises to 25

The death toll from alcohol poisoning in western Russia this month rose to 25 after lethal methanol levels were confirmed in six more bodies, investigators said Saturday.

Incidents of mass deaths from cheap moonshine are not uncommon in Russia, which has been blighted by high levels of alcoholism for years, though they have rolled back from the records reached in the 1990s.

“Forensic medical examination of the bodies of six deceased persons … had revealed high or lethal levels of methanol,” Russia’s main investigative body, the Investigative Committee said.

The bodies were delivered between September 10 and 17 from the Volosovsky district of the Leningrad region, it added.

Three suspects were detained and are awaiting trial, according to the investigators.

Earlier this week, prosecutors sentenced two people to almost a decade in prison for manufacturing and selling a counterfeit cider drink that killed 50 people in 2023.

And in 2016, more than 60 people died in Irkutsk in Siberia after drinking contraband bath oil that contained methanol.

Russia toughened legislation after that incident, but cheap home-made spirits using alcohol substitutes remain widely available, particularly in rural areas with low standards of living and where the price of vodka is prohibitively high.