Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova (, Putina, Путина; born 28 April 1985), also referred to as Maria Faassen, is a Russian

pediatric Pediatrics (American English) also spelled paediatrics (British English), is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, pediatrics covers many of their youth ...

endocrinologist Endocrinology (from ''endocrine'' + '' -ology'') is a branch of biology and medicine dealing with the endocrine system, its diseases, and its specific secretions known as hormones. It is also concerned with the integration of developmental events ...

. She is the eldest child of Russian president

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

Early life

Vorontsova was born in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

(now Saint Petersburg), the elder daughter of

and Lyudmila Putina (née Shkrebneva). She attended German school at

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

, while her family lived there in the late 1980s. After her family returned to Leningrad in the spring of 1991, she attended Peterschule (), a German gymnasium in Saint Petersburg. Later, during violent gang wars involving the Tambov Gang while it was taking control of Saint Petersburg's energy trade, she and her sister Katerina were sent by their father, who feared for their safety, to Germany where their legal guardian was former

Stasi The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...

Matthias Warnig, who had worked with their father in Dresden as part of a KGB cell and established the Dresdner Bank branch in Saint Petersburg. She played the violin for a Russian

consulate general A consul is an official representative of a government who resides in a foreign country to assist and protect citizens of the consul's country, and to promote and facilitate commercial and diplomatic relations between the two countries. A consu ...

of Hamburg–sponsored diplomatic breakfast in 1995. Later, after her family moved to Moscow, she attended the German School Moscow, a school closely associated with the German Embassy in Moscow for children of diplomats. She graduated after 11 years of school. Three years later, she began her university studies, enrolling together with Katerina as first year students.Alt URL
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Studies and career

Vorontsova studied biology at

Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBGU; ) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the Great, the university from the be ...

and is a graduate of medicine at

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

in 2011. With Ivan Ivanovich Dedov () as her advisor, she was a PhD candidate at the Endocrinology Research Centre in Moscow, headed by Dedov and which runs the charity project Alfa-Endo, for children with

endocrine disease Endocrine diseases are disorders of the endocrine system. The branch of medicine associated with endocrine disorders is known as endocrinology. Types of disease Broadly speaking, endocrine disorders may be subdivided into three groups: # Endocri ...

s. Alfa-Endo is funded by Petr Aven and

Mikhail Fridman Mikhail Maratovich Fridman (also transliterated Mikhail Friedman; ; ; born 21 April 1964) is a Ukrainian-born, Russian–Israeli tycoon and Russian oligarchs, oligarch. He is one of the co-founders of Alfa Group, Alfa-Group, a multinational Rus ...

's Alfa-Bank of the

Alfa Group Alfa Group Consortium () is a Russian international privately owned investment groups, with interests in oil and gas, commercial and investment banking, asset management, insurance, retail trade, telecommunications, water utilities and special ...

. Between 2013 and 2015, Vorontsova co-authored five studies including "The status of blood antioxidant system in patients with active acromegaly". She also, in 2015, co-authored a book about idiopathic stunting in children. Vorontsova is credited to be Putin's advisor in

genetic engineering Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of Genetic engineering techniques, technologies used to change the genet ...

, especially in the usage of

CRISPR CRISPR (; acronym of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. Each sequence within an individual prokaryotic CRISPR is d ...

to create genetically engineered babies. In November 2023, Vorontsova was appointed to the board of the Moscow Society of Medical Genetics (). According to Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's team, she's earning millions of dollars per year as an employee of the New Medical Company (NOMEKO).

Sanctions

On 6 April 2022, following the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

, the

United States Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the Treasury, national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current United States federal executive departments, U.S. government departments. ...

sanctioned Vorontsova, stating that she "leads state-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin toward genetics research and are personally overseen by Putin." She is also sanctioned by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

, the United Kingdom, Japan and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

Personal life

Vorontsova married Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen in summer 2008 in

Wassenaar Wassenaar (; population: in ) is a municipality and town located in the province of South Holland, on the western coast of the Netherlands. An affluent suburb of The Hague, Wassenaar lies north of that city on the N44/A44 highway near the Nort ...

in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. They have a son, born August 2012. In 2013, they were living in a penthouse atop the highest residential building in Voorschoten. In 2014, Dutch residents called for Vorontsova to be expelled from the country after

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces with a Buk missile system, Bu ...

was allegedly shot down by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. In 2015, Vorontsova and Faassen were reported to be living in Moscow. In 2022, it was reported that they are no longer married. Vorontsova is married to Yevgeny Nagorny, who works at the Russian oil and gas company Novatek. They have a son, born April 2017.

References

External links