Desperate Putin’s bid to be around for as long as possible has been detailed in his latest, and rather peculiar, request from scientists.
The Russian dictator has reportedly ordered scientists to create an “anti-ageing wonder cure” for him and his circle of elderly cronies.
He apparently came from the “biggest boss” and led to officials scrambling to fulfil the instructions from the 71-year-old, who has become obsessed with “active longevity”.
A letter from his health ministry demanding the latest developments in turning back the biological clock was revealed by independent news outlets Meduza and Sistema. The note, sent in June, shocked senior medical researchers.
A source said: “The biggest boss set a task, and officials rushed to implement it in every possible way.
“We were asked to urgently send all our developments. If the letter came, let’s say, today, everything had to be sent yesterday.”
A doctor from a national medical research centre added: “To be honest, this is the first time in my life that I have ever encountered such a thing – usually any national project or Federal Target programme is preceded by a series of meetings with the participation of various specialists, some kind of public discussion.”
Experts were told to submit “development proposals” to reduce cell deterioration, according to the news report.
They were also instructed to highlight new technologies preventing cognitive and sensory impairment, as well as methods for correcting the immune system and new medical technology based on bioprinting.
Putin is famously surrounded by a ring of ageing cronies, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (74), FSB security service chief Alexander Bortnikov (72), senior advisor Nikolai Patrushev (73), SVR spy chief Sergey Naryshkin (69), and speaker of the Russian senate, Valentina Matviyenko (75).
A source close to the Kremlin said: “All the modern research discussed in the national project are quite expensive — it requires a lot of money and expenses. Developing new drugs costs billions, not a single national project can handle that, especially now.”
Some experts believe close Putin ally, Mikhail Kovalchuk, 77, head of Russia’s leading nuclear institute, is ultimately behind the initiative.
Seen as a conspiracy theorist, he advocates developing a so-called “Russian genome”, and has talked of “a weapon that is targeting a particular ethnicity”. He has accused foreign states of seeking to create a new type of “servant human”.
Putin suffered a blow earlier this year with the sudden death of his longstanding anti-ageing guru Professor Vladimir Khavinson (77) director of the St Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology.
Khavinson famously claimed he was developing the secret for humans to live to 110 or 120 by slowing the process of ageing.
He was known to have tried to help three earlier Kremlin leaders – Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Boris Yeltsin – but complained that he had been invited too late to significantly extend their lives.
Putin’s lover Alina Kabaeva (41), like other top Russian gymnasts, took his ‘Khavinson’s peptides’, anti-ageing and curative cocktails he pioneered after years of secret research while working for the Soviet Red Army.
