Russia's new national project focuses on 'immortality'

"Everyone gets old, including politicians," he said. "Anti-aging therapies are very popular and the conditions for the introduction of new technologies are favorable."

In February, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, delivered the keynote address at a chic conference titled Modern Medical Technologies: Tomorrow's Early Challenges.

"We have established this forum to discuss promising solutions that are emerging and being tested now, but that will profoundly change very soon... people's lives," Putin, 71, said, pausing several times for them. cut throat.

At the center of Putin's speech was the announcement of the "national project" of Russia, which is the 14th. This project is called "New Technologies for Saving Health". National projects are multilateral government-led initiatives aimed at improving key areas such as demography, education, agriculture and health. They were introduced by Putin in 2005 and are an ongoing part of his campaigns for uncontested elections.

On May 16, about a week after Putin was inaugurated for the fifth time as the country's president, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova officially presented the new project and announced that it will start in 2025.

Golikova emphasized that Russia's "demographic trends" have created "new challenges for health", which, in return, can help develop "advanced paths of medical technology".

In particular, she mentioned technologies for slowing cell aging, neurotechnologies, and "other ways to increase longevity." A key aspect of the new initiative will be work on "future biomedical technologies for healthy and active aging," state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

The focus on slowing aging and increasing longevity caught the attention of many in medical circles.

The new national project reflects "the whims of an aging politburo," said a specialist at a Moscow hospital.

"Everyone gets old, including politicians," he said. "Anti-aging therapies are very popular and the conditions for the introduction of new technologies are favorable."

New research from Systema, the Russian research unit of Radio Free Europe, and the Russian-language outlet Meduza, has analyzed Putin's new national priority project and takes a look at some of the key ideas.

"They wanted answers yesterday"

The budget for the new national project has not been announced. According to RIA Novosti's summary, the project aims to "save 175.000 lives" by 2030.

Another goal of the project is that "the percentage of medical treatment cases using new medical technologies and innovative medical products" should reach 10 percent within five years.

In early June, the Department of Health Care Science and Innovation of the Ministry of Health sent a letter to Russia's leading research institutes, requesting urgent grant proposals in the following areas: Development of medical products aimed at reducing the burden of aging cellular; development of new neurotechnologies and related medical products aimed at detecting and treating sensory and cognitive impairments; the development of methods of directing the immune system based on its role in the aging process and the development of new medical technologies based on bioprinting.

Bioprinting uses living cells, proteins and other raw materials to produce human tissue for healing injuries and diseases.

The letter, a copy of which was provided by Systema and Meduza, was confirmed by two doctors working at medical-research centers and an employee of an academic institute. They expressed surprise at the urgency of the request.

"We were asked to send all our ideas immediately," said one of the doctors.

"The letter came today, let's say, and they asked for the answers yesterday," he added.

"To be honest, it's the first time in my life I've seen something like this," he continued. "Usually for a national project or any federal program there are a series of meetings with different specialists and everything is discussed publicly", according to him.

The other doctor said he is "shocked" by the letter.

"It seems that for now we have no one to deal with except our 'old stumps,'" he said, referring to the old circle of leaders who have ruled during Putin's 25 years as president, or prime minister.

“Now [with the ongoing war in Ukraine], we're supposed to stop everything else. The cynicism is incomprehensible," he added.

The sources that Systema and Meduza spoke to said that they have not yet responded to the call for proposals from the Ministry of Health.

"Modern research, like what they mention in this national project, is quite expensive," said a Kremlin-connected source. "They require a lot of money and resources. The development of new therapies costs billions of euros, which no national project can afford these days."

"A Servant"

A Kremlin-connected source told Systema and Meduza that the genesis of the new national project was "an obsession magnified by lobbying."

"This is Mikhail Kovalchuk, who talks enthusiastically about eternal life and the 'Russian genome,'" the source said. "He ran to the president."

Kovalchuk, 77, is a physicist and the older brother of billionaire businessman Yury Kovalchuk, who has been described as "Putin's personal banker" and has been closely associated with Putin since the latter was vice mayor of St. Petersburg in early 90s.

Mikhail Kovalchuk is president of the Kurchatov Institute, a nuclear research facility in Moscow, and has been a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 2000. Last year he was appointed president of the Moscow Polytechnic Museum.

Three sources with knowledge of the development of the new national project also mentioned Kovalchuk as a possible initiator of the idea. Kovalchuk is already in charge of the federal genetics program, in which Putin's eldest daughter, endocrinologist Maria Vorontsova, plays an important role.

In a strange 2015 speech, Kovalchuk accused "foreign elites" of trying to hijack the "evolutionary process" to create "one servant".

Those people, he said, would have "limited consciousness", their reproduction would be "managed", and they would be fed "cheap food...from genetically modified organisms". He provided no evidence to support these outlandish claims.

Russian media have often reported that Putin believes in such ideas.

“You can already imagine, and not only theoretically, that one can create people with a certain set of characteristics,” Putin said in 2017. “It can be a mathematical genius, or a great musician. Or it can be a soldier, a person who can fight without fear, or feelings of compassion, pity or pain."

"At any cost"

In October of the same year, Putin claimed that foreigners were "systematically and professionally collecting biomaterial" of Russian citizens.

"Why are they doing this?" he asked.

In 2009, Kovalchuk's institute conducted a project to "decode the Russian genome".

He has repeatedly spoken of wanting to live a long and productive life.

His thinking on this subject was influenced by Konstantin Skryabin, who worked under Kovalchuk's orders at the Kurchatov Institute on the Russian genome project.

"We [scientists] like to discuss the problem of human immortality," Skryabin said

It seems that Putin's latest national project on New Health-Saving Technologies is the result of such discussions, agreed several experts asked by Systema and Meduza after reading the letter from the Russian Ministry of Health.

"The big boss has assigned the task," said a researcher at a Moscow think tank. "And the bureaucrats have undertaken to fulfill it at all costs."

*NOTE: Because the Government of Russia has declared REL an "undesirable organization", REL has concealed its identity from its sources in Russia to protect them from prosecution.