In a conversation captured by an open microphone during a military parade in Beijing in early September 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly explained to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that humans could soon become immortal by replacing their organs. This is not mere chatter between aging autocrats out of touch with reality, but a Kremlin-backed longevity initiative that has become one of Russia’s flagship scientific projects.
This quest for eternal life – at least for the latest possible death – is now a national priority in Russia, based on varied methods, explains the Wall Street Journal: organ printing, breeding of mini-pigs and exposure to ultra-low temperatures, everything goes well. In April 2026, the Russian government announced the development of a gene therapy treatment aimed at slowing cellular aging as part of “New Health Preserving Technologies”, a longevity initiative with a budget of 26 billion dollars (approximately 22.3 billion euros).
The project is not only focused on Vladimir Putin’s health, it promises to affect 175,000 lives by the end of the decade (a minimum given Russian losses in Ukraine since the start of the conflict). State scientists are focusing in particular on two technologies: bioprinting (3D printing of living tissues) and xenotransplantation (growing human organs in host organisms, here genetically compatible mini-pigs).
The longevity initiative is led by two figures close to Vladimir Putin, Maria Vorontsova, his daughter, an endocrinologist overseeing state genetic programs, and Mikhail Kovalchuk, a physicist who heads the Kurchatov Institute. Mikhail Kovaltchouk, the main architect of the approach, says science will soon make it possible to repair and replace body parts indefinitely.
Unlike the research funded by American tech giants such as Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, the work promoted by Vladimir Putin’s circle remains opaque and has produced very little peer-reviewed research in major international journals. For Alexander Ostrovskiy, a Russian scientist who pioneered bioprinting, “if there are no publications, there are no real results, and their declarations should rather be seen as wishes, or even dreams.”
Calf tissue and cryotherapy
Mikhail Kovalchuk is a political researcher. He merged the science of longevity with the Kremlin’s worldview—that of Russia’s civilizational struggle against the West. He also suggested that the United States was behind the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vladimir Putin seems open to anything when it comes to helping him live longer. Vladimir Khavinson, nicknamed “Vladimir Putin’s gerontologist”, for example, works on anti-aging therapies based on peptides derived from calf tissue, affirming that humans were made to live for one hundred and twenty years. In 2018, Vladimir Putin advised Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz to try a cryotherapy chamber, exposing the body to temperatures of -170 degrees Fahrenheit (-112°C). At 73, the Russian president still cultivates an image of physical vigor, carefully maintained by state propaganda.
Behind this displayed virility hides a leader particularly concerned about illness and his own physical decline. During the pandemic, Vladimir Putin imposed elaborate quarantine protocols, disinfection tunnels and prolonged isolation for visitors – we all remember the famous disproportionately long table at which he received them.
Today, Russia remains marked by some of the most severe mortality rates in the developed world. The average male life expectancy is about 68 years today, compared with 76 years in the United States and more than 80 years in much of Western Europe.
