Maria Vorontsova, the daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, gave a rare, under-the-radar interview last month.
Vorontsova, an endocrinologist, sat down for a 42-minute interview with nonprofit Medtech.Moscow on December 16 in which she discussed global advances in medicine and her interests in literary and musical arts.
While the appearance from Putin’s eldest child was heavily promoted on the Russian social network Vkontakte, the video has not been widely viewed, having garnered less than 10,000 views on YouTube as of Friday.
During the interview, Vorontsova, who has largely stayed out of the public eye, called Russia a “human-centric society” rather than a “economic-centric society” and where “the value of human life is a supreme value.” Her association to her father was not mentioned by the interview host or brought up during the conversation.
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Vorontsova is one of two daughters that Putin shares with his first wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva, whom he divorced in 2013. Vorontsova and her sister, Katerina Tikhonova, both have children of their own. Putin has never publicly acknowledged the two women as his daughters and the Kremlin has closely guarded details of their lives. Vorontsova has not publicly commented on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Vorontsova’s remarks about the value of human life under Russian society caught the attention of several users on X, formerly Twitter, who suggested that her comments were hypocritical given her father’s aggressive approach to the war in Ukraine, which has been waging for almost two years.
“I wonder if those swept up in her father’s ‘partial mobilisation’ and sent to the likes of Bakhmut or Maryinka would agree,” BBC journalist Francis Scarr posted on X on Friday.
“For us, the highest value is the value of human life – Putin’s daughter Maria Vorontsova,” Nikola Mikovic, a journalist who covers the foreign policies of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, wrote Thursday. “Sure. Especially lives of Russian soldiers who were forced to storm Ukrainian well-fortified positions.”
U.S. officials estimated in December that the conflict has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The figure represents 87 percent of Russia’s pre-war troops. Putin announced a partial mobilization in September 2022, calling up 300,000 military reservists to join the war effort.
A Ukrainian civic group said it had confirmed the deaths of 24,500 Ukrainian soldiers in November. A New York Times report citing anonymous U.S. officials put the Ukrainian death toll close to 70,000 in August.
The interview with Vorontsova was hosted by Medtech.Moscow CEO Vyacheslav Shulenin, who reportedly served in the Moscow Mayor’s Office between 2013 and 2017, according to independent, investigative Russian news outlet Agentstvo. His last position listed with the mayor’s office was as first deputy chief of staff.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry via email for comment
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.