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Richard Beeston has an excellent piece in today's Times on some of the more medium term consequences of Russia's behaviour. I think this, right at the end of the piece, is perhaps the most important point of all:
I'd urge you to read Nick Eberstadt's seminal 2002 piece in Foreign Affairs on the impact of AIDS. As the sumary puts it:
(See also his excellent piece in The Times in 2004.)
The Brussels think tank, the Centre for a New Europe (to declare an interest, I am President of CNE) is about to begin a programme of work on the impact of AIDS on Europe, and we are also focussing on how Russia is already being devastated by AIDS, and how this will impact on the rest of EU. The African AIDS crisis is well known; few people seem to be aware of the Russian crisis, which in some ways is worse:
In 2007, an estimated 1.5 million people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia were living with HIV, more than double the figure in 2001 when an estimated 650,000 people were HIV-positive, the UNAIDS report said.
The largest HIV epidemic in the region is in Russia and almost 90 per cent of those infected in the region live in either the Russian Federation or Ukraine, it added.