A leading endocrinologist who praised President Vladimir Putin’s efforts in combating the deadly coronavirus pandemic Tuesday was a onetime research adviser to Putin’s rumored daughter, according to Russian media.
Ivan Dedov, president of the Health Ministry’s national endocrinology center and one of nine experts invited to consult Putin on the virus Tuesday, commended Putin for “balanced” policies and “heartfelt” public addresses.
“I’m absolutely convinced that Russia will come out of this very difficult situation with minimal losses. The key to this belief is the government’s well-balanced and well-calculated policy,” Dedov said.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], I can hear your pain for the losses, for the state. But [your] very proper and tactful tone of truthful conversation [with the public] resonates with our hearts,” he said, according to a Kremlin transcript.
Dedov was the research supervisor of Maria Vorontsova, who is widely rumored to be Putin’s eldest daughter, at the Moscow State University in 2011, according to her 2016 profile in Russian media.
Vorontsova went on to pursue postgraduate studies at Dedov’s endocrinology institute, the independent Russian news magazine The New Times reported almost a decade ago.
In 2011, Dedov ran and won an uncontested race for the presidency of Russia’s Academy of Medical Sciences, which was absorbed into the Academy of Sciences two years later. In 2012, his son Dmitry Dedov was appointed as a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judge in France.
The science platform Researchgate lists Dedov as the co-author of more than 600 research papers dating back to 1983.
Little is publicly known about Vorontsova, who has never been officially confirmed as Putin’s daughter.
Putin has repeatedly dodged questions to confirm or deny reports about his familial relations to Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, another woman reported to be his daughter.
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