Putin’s Longevity Experiments With Mini Pigs Devour $26 Billion Through 2030

Russia is tightening the screws on ordinary spending, but the Kremlin has found room for a very different priority: trying to beat aging. Under the banner “New Health Preservation Technologies,” about $26 billion — roughly 2 trillion rubles — is slated to go into gene therapy, bioprinting, genetically modified mini pigs and cold-chamber treatments through 2030, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The program has been declared a national research priority and is supposed to save 175,000 lives by the end of the decade. On paper, the scope is broad. Gene therapy is meant to target the aging of cells. Bioprinting aims to produce living tissue that could eventually replace organs. Xenotransplantation is supposed to grow human organs inside mini pigs. Cryotherapy is part of the mix too.

The scientific case looks thinner than the funding. Russian officials have talked up the project, with deputy science minister Denis Sekirinsky calling gene therapy one of the most promising ways to fight aging. But experts quoted by the Journal are skeptical, and point to a lack of international peer-reviewed publications. The Russian scientist Alexander Ostrovskiy put it bluntly: without publications, there are no real results, only aspirations — or dreams.

The people around the project make it even more political. Putin’s daughter Maria Vorontsova oversees state genetics programs. Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute, is described as the program’s intellectual architect. He is the brother of Yury Kovalchuk, one of Putin’s closest confidants and a Western-sanctioned figure. The late gerontologist Vladimir Khavinson also helped shape the discussion for years, arguing that people could live to 120.

All of this sits beside a war budget that keeps growing. Russia plans military spending of 17.1 trillion rubles in 2027, up from 12.1 trillion this year, while social spending, education and health care are being cut. Taxes are rising too, including VAT, and the budget still runs a deficit. So the state is asking Russians to pay more while betting billions on the dream that the powerful might get to live longer.