The aim of study was to evaluate the molecular structure of the epidemiological and drug-resistant HIV-1 variants in patients with ART failure in Veliky Novgorod. Patients' blood plasma (n=25) with HIV infection from Veliky Novgorod were used, aimed at identifying drug resistant viruses due to ART failure. Determination of subtypes of HIV-1 was performed by nucleotide sequence analysis of polymerase gene (pol) length of 1285 nt, protease encoding (PR) 465 nt in length and the reverse transcriptase (RT) gene portion length of 820 nt. Isolates phylogenetic analysis indicates that the predominant HIV-1 subtype A1 (96%) in the studied group of patients, which is the most common form of HIV-1 in Russia, and only one sample is a recombinant form of CRF_03 AB (4%). In 66,7% of men and 60% of women with HIV infection was first detected at the age of 30, which reflects the characteristics of the epidemic in recent years in the Russian Federation. When evaluating drug resistance mutations in only 56% of patients mutations of resistance to any drugs were identified. Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors resistance mutations were detected in 85,7% (48% of the group in total), non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors resistance mutations were detected in 78,57% (44% of the group in total), protease inhibitors resistance mutations were detected in 21,42% (12% of the group). Molecular genetic analysis confirms the high virus homogeneity on the territory of the Russian Federation, however, reveals evidence of clustering multiple independent episodes of the virus penetration in the injecting drug users population in Novgorod region. © 2017.