A new study suggests that the high number of early deaths in Russia is mainly due to people drinking too much alcohol, especially vodka.

The study says that 25 percent of Russian men die before they are 55, and most of the deaths are down to alcohol. The comparable UK figure is 7 percent.

Causes of death include liver disease and alcohol poisoning. Many also die in accidents or after getting into fights.

The study is thought to be the largest of its kind in the country.

Researchers from the Russian Cancer Centre in Moscow, Oxford University in the UK and the Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer, in France, tracked the drinking patterns of 151,000 adults in three Russian cities over up to 10 years.

During that time, 8,000 of them died. The researchers also drew on previous studies in which families of 49,000 people who had died were asked about their loved ones' drinking habits.

Study co-author Prof Sir Richard Peto, from the University of Oxford, said that Russian death rates have fluctuated wildly over the last 30 years as alcohol restrictions and social stability varied under Presidents Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, and the main thing driving these wild fluctuations in death was vodka.

Most drinkers were smokers as well which researchers say "aggravated" the death rates.

The study is published in The Lancet.