Objective — to determine the incidence and prognosis of HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer (OPC), by retrospectively analyzing the operated patients with stage III—IV. Subjecs and methods. Seventy-two patients aged 42 to 77 years with Stage III—IV OPC were operated on in April 2009 to November 2016. Primary tumor was localized in the palatine tonsil in 34 (46%) patients, in the root of the tongue in 24 (33%), and in the soft palate in 14 (21%). The postoperative study of the metastases removed indicated that the T stage distribution for the primary tumor was T1 in 6 patients, T2 in 12, T3 in 28, and T4 in 20. Sixty-two patients were N-positive: N1 in 10 patients, N2 in 51 (including 5 patients with bilateral lymph node involvement (N2c), and N3 in 1 patient. Forty-five (63.4%) patients received adjuvant radiation therapy or chemoradiation therapy at a dose of 44 to 66 Gy. To determine the status of p16 that is a surrogate marker for HPV-associated OPC, archival paraffin-embedded blocks of tumors underwent immunohistochemical examination. Survival rates were estimated by the Kaplan—Meier method using the date of a patient’s last visit or death. Statistical data processing was performed with SPSS Version 3 program. Results. One patient died in the early postoperative period. Archival histological material was available in 69 (97.2%) of the remaining patients (n=71). Tumor cells (more than 90%) intensively expressed p16 in 13 (18.8%) of the 69 cases. The p16-positive group was characterized by a large number of female patients (38 versus 11%), by almost the same mean age (58 versus 57.1 years), a slightly larger number of small primary tumors (38 versus 25%), and a similar number of N-positive cases (92.3 versus 87.5%). The overall 3-year survival rates were 65.81 and 37.89% in the p16-positive group (mean follow-up period, 40.92; 11—94 months) and in the p16-negative tumor group (mean follow-up period, 24.25; 2—94 months), respectively (p=0.131). Conclusion. The results of this investigation may suggest that that the prevalence of HPV-positive OPC is quite low in the Russian Federation and resembles that seen in the countries of Eastern Europe and Asia. A more favorable prognosis for p16-positive cases has been partly confirmed, although the statistical significance of this conclusion has not been achieved. Clearly, to obtain more reliable results, it is necessary to conduct a nationwide study of HPV associations in routine practice of all cancer institutions. Given the low incidence of HPV-positive OPC, the prospects for de-escalation of OPC treatment in the Russian Federation seem to be poorly grounded for the vast majority of patients suffering from this disease.