Vladimir Putin has sunk billions of Russian dollars into outlandish human longevity experiments — but some critics are skeptical whether the so-called-science has any grounding in reality.
Putin, 73, has dropped at least $26 billion on state research for the likes of gene-therapy drugs intended to slow cellular aging in a project known as “New Health Preservation Technologies,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
That drug “represents one of the most promising avenues in the fight against aging,” Russia’s Deputy Science Minister Denis Sekirinsky said in April — but is just one of numerous longevity projects Putin has been pushing in a decades-long obsession that apparently began when he was as young as 16.
Other avenues Putin has pushed include growing human organs inside pigs for transplant into humans in a procedure called xenotransplantation, and 3D-printing live tissue in a practice known as bioprinting.
Government-funded Russian scientists claim to have successfully printed a mouse thyroid gland and human cartilage, and have said they’ll be printing whole human organs for transplant by the end of the decade, the Journal reported.
And those projects aren’t just the works of mad scientists toiling in secrecy — Putin himself publicly announced the initiative in April 2024 and vowed such methods would have saved 175,000 lives by 2030.
“In the Russian Federation, work is under way on a whole range of scientific programs in this field,” the Kremlin told the Journal. “These projects are supported by the state, and many scientific and research institutions are taking part in them.”
One of the leading figures of the initiative is Putin’s own daughter, 41-year-old endocrinologist Maria Vorontsova, who is leading the state genetics projects. Prominent Russian physicist Mikhail Kovalchuk — whose brother Yuri is a financier closely tied to Putin — has also played a central role.
“It is difficult to discuss immortality, but the ability to repair man will undoubtedly increase,” Kovalchuk has told media in Russia, arguing that humanity will soon be able to indefinitely repair and place organs.
Ccritics have argued little peer-reviewed research has been published — and that many of the researchers may simply be yes-men looking to please Russia’s powerful leader of more than 20 years.
“If there are no publications then there are no real results, and their statements should probably be taken as aspirations, not to say dreams,” said Russian bioprinting pioneer Alexander Ostrovskiy, who fled the country after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“It’s impossible to do science in isolation,” he said. “They are probably telling Putin what he wants to hear to secure funding.”
Russia’s top doctors before his 2024 death, Vladimir Khavinson, even said one his greatest aspirations was prolonging Putin’s life. Another goal was expanding the human lifespan to 120 years, according to the Journal.
Putin’s obsession with health has long been visible to the public.
Photos of the president baring his buff chest while riding horses and motorcycles, or hunting bears and fishing have become so synonymous they’ve turned into memes over the years.
He has also boasted about his longevity plans with other world leaders — in 2025 he was heard on a hot mic telling Chinese president Xi Jinping that organ replacement could allow humans to live forever, while in 2018 he reportedly gushed to Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz about the benefits of standing naked in a freezing cryotherapy chamber.
It’s a fixation that may have begun as far back as 1968, when Soviet movie “Dead Season” was released and told a story of CIA agents working with Nazi doctors to control humanity through medical experiments.
Putin was deeply moved by the movie and has said it inspired him to join the KGB by 1975, the Journal reported.
But all of Putin’s obsession with longevity — and the public image surrounding his own — may have backfired, as conspiracy theories about his health have dogged him for years.
The president has been seen with severely shaking hands and legs in numerous videos over recent years, while people have analyzed apparent changes in his face to speculate he is at death’s door — or even already dead, and replaced with body doubles to fool the Russian populace.
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