President Vladimir Putin’s oldest daughter has been appointed to the board of the Moscow Society of Medical Genetics, the independent news outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reported Monday, citing her public profile on the organization’s website and a video in which she criticizes laws adopted during her father’s time in office.
Maria Vorontsova is a candidate of medical sciences, roughly equivalent to a Ph.D. in Western countries, and an endocrinologist by training.
The website of the Moscow Society of Medical Genetics lists her among 11 doctors associated with the organization, which according to Mozhem Obyasnit was founded two years ago.
The outlet notes that in her role at the medical organization, Vorontsova has criticized patient care laws adopted while her father was president.
A YouTube video of Vorontsova speaking at a genetics conference in May shows her criticizing practices related to informed consent, which frees doctors from certain legal liabilities.
“It’s a crude tool. I understand this as a patient. After all, the patient is given a pile of papers, which he signs without even [understanding] the details,” she can be heard saying in the video.
Vorontsova and her younger sister Katerina Tikhonova were sanctioned by the U.S., EU, U.K., New Zealand and Japan in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The EU said Vorontsova was on its list because she was co-owner of Nomenko, a company “involved in Russia’s largest private investment project in healthcare.” She was thus deemed to benefit from the Russian government and was involved in a sector providing it revenue.
Western academic journals have continued to publish articles by Vorontsova since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Mozhem Obyasnit reported in September.
The Kremlin has kept details of Putin’s daughters’ lives a closely guarded secret.
Putin has never acknowledged that Vorontsova and Tikhonova are his daughters, often referring to them only as “these women” during interviews.
