Russians have taken to injecting themselves with cheap copycat Ozempic after Novo Nordisk’s withdrawal of its blockbuster drug prompted local pharma companies to flood the market with alternatives.

Five brands have taken over the lucrative niche after the drug, which is approved to treat diabetes but is also used unofficially for weight loss, became one of the few western medicines to all but disappear from Russian pharmacy shelves when western companies withdrew following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

The Kremlin responded by signing off on a series of “compulsory licences”, letting local drugmakers use Novo Nordisk’s formula without a patent, with the claim that continued supply of the drug was crucial for hundreds of thousands of Russians with type 2 diabetes.