In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Russian pediatric endocrinologist and businesswoman, Maria Vorontsova née Putina. She’s best-known for being the daughter of Vladimir Putin, supporting the Kremlin’s genocidal war on Ukraine, and for living a lavish life in the West.

Maria was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) but attended a German school in Dresden while her father was working there as an FSB officer. After the collapse of the Communist East German government, they moved back to Leningrad.

Later, during Russia’s violent gang wars, Maria and her sister Katerina were sent to Germany to safety, and were safeguarded by Putin’s old friend, Matthias Warnig.

Perhaps due to the babysitting, Warnig was later given a big role in the Nord Stream pipeline project.

Father Vladimir has always tried to keep the life of his daughters out of the spotlight. He secured their anonymity by providing them surnames that couldn’t be traced back to him. Maria goes by Vorontsova, a last name that remained of mysterious origin until this day.

Around 2005 in Moscow, Maria fell in love with Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen. As is tradition, he quickly became a high-ranking businessman in Russia, first working as a director at Stroytransgaz and later at Gazprombank. Jorrit married Maria in 2008 in the Netherlands.

During their marriage, Maria Putina enjoyed her anonymous life in The Netherlands. The couple would go live in Voorschoten, a small city nearby The Hague.

In 2008 pictures popped up of Maria enjoying carnival in Maastricht and a visit to a bicycle repair shop in Amsterdam.

In 2011, Maria’s husband was involved in a traffic incident in Moscow. Matvey Urin, a Moscow banker, blamed Faassen for the incident and ordered his body guards to beat him up. This ended up being a big mistake for Urin: he was captured by the Moscow police, …

…and he was later sentenced to three years in jail for hooliganism and 7, 5 years for fraud. He also lost his bank. The police officer who stopped him was later given a position of Minister of Internal Affairs. As is tradition.

Soon Dutch newspapers started publishing stories on the couple. It didn’t take long for Sergey Lavrov to claim that the “Dutch media have not only endangered their own citizens but also family members of a friendly nation, ” and that they “clearly damaged Russian interests”.

After Girkin & his separatist gang shot down the MH17 using a Russian BUK system in Ukrainian airspace, Putin quickly pulled his daughter back to safety to Russia. Even before this, Dutch mayor Pieter Broertjes had suggested that Maria should be deported back to Russia.

But Maria wasn’t ready to leave Europe just yet. She relocated her family to Kitzbühel, the Austrian ski resort for the super rich. According to an investigation by @derStandardat, they lived in a villa owned by Putin’s judo friend Arkady Rotenberg.

Some time later, Maria Vorontsova finally graduated from Moscow State University and could call herself encronologist. During her studies, she published research papers and co-authored a book. Today, she’s Putin’s advisor in genetic engineering, focusing on the usage…

…of CRISPR to create genetically-engineered babies. In November 2023, she was appointed to the board of the Moscow Society of Medical Genetics, and according to Navalnya’s FBK, she earns millions of dollars annually as an employee of the New Medical Company (NOMEKO).

Naturally, Putin’s cronyism landed Maria another high status job — she became the deputy dean of Moscow State University’s prestigious medical department. This would enhance her status as researcher and consequently become yet another source of income.

At some point the relationship between her and Mr. Faassen grew sour, and the couple separated. She later married Yevgheny Nagorny, who was also awarded with a job at a Russian oil and gas company, Novatek. They attended a wedding together in 2019 in Salerno, Italy.

Soon after Russia launched their full-scale invasion against Ukraine, Vorontsova was sanctioned by the EU, the UK, the US, Japan and New Zealand. Incidentally, her boyfriend/husband was never sanctioned, so I’d imagine most of her businesses are now under his name.

After this, Maria was staunchly defending her father’s stance on Ukraine, LGBT+ issues & the “Western decadence” under the alias “Maria V” in a university alumni Telegram group. She also claimed that Russia “is not the aggressor, but a victim, and is forced to defend itself.”

In recent years, Vorontsova has been still publishing scientific papers on endocrinology in open source Swiss publication MPDI. Of course it’s impossible to say if its actually her work — for example, Putin’s own doctoral dissertation was probably written by someone else.

I’ll conclude with an interesting finding — I’m pretty sure that most media sites, including @washingtonpost and @NBCNews, got it wrong when they claimed that a young woman photographed together with Putin is Maria. They are clearly different people. What do you think?

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Pekka Kallioniemi (@vatniksou…

Vatnik Soup