Vladimir Putin’s anti-ageing guru has died suddenly aged 77 in a significant blow to the dictator.
The cause of death of Professor Vladimir Khavinson, director of the St Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology, has not been revealed.
Khavinson famously claimed he was developing the secret for humans to live to 110 or 120 by slowing the process of ageing.
Putin, 71, is known to have a close interest in techniques for prolonging life and decorated the professor in 2017 with a major honor at a Kremlin ceremony.
Khavinson told a “perfect” Putin that he could rule at least into his mid-80s, a path the dictator is now apparently following after announcing he will stand in March for a new six-year term in the Kremlin.
Earlier, the professor is known to have helped three Kremlin leaders – Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Boris Yeltsin – but complained that he had been invited too late to significantly extend their lives.
It is also known that Putin’s lover Alina Kabaeva, 40, like other top Russian gymnasts, took his Khavinson’s peptides, anti-ageing and curative cocktails he pioneered after years of secret research while working for the Soviet Red Army.
In 2017, he offered to help Donald Trump “because he has a huge amount of stress and energy losses”.
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Commenting on Putin’s 2013 picture with his naked torso while riding a horse, he said: “Wonderful photo – that’s what a man should look like.
“Why is he perfect?
“He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he does sports. His example should be followed. Everyone, young and not, should do the same.”
He predicted the strongman could go on for “20 years at least – his potential is very high”, while not admitting if Putin took his peptides.
“At the time I was a military scientist and the goal was to create new drugs to stimulate resources of organ use for military people,” he said.
Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship in a Kremlin ceremony.
In Soviet times, the expert developed medication to help submariners, cosmonauts, soldiers in Afghanistan, and survivors of the Chornobyl nuclear explosion.
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He once said: “I am often asked abroad: how did you do it? Everything was based on the achievements of the Soviet Union, the Military Medicine Academy, and the Defence Ministry who financed this research for military purposes.”
He was allowed to secretly test his experimental drugs on Russian people under the cloak of military confidentiality.
Everyone should also be injected for ten days twice a year with “a natural medication extracted from calves,” he said.
He claimed his institute’s medicines for delaying ageing – inclining Thymalin and Epithalamin – were discoveries “as important as the development of the atomic bomb.
“It is colossally significant for the whole of mankind.”
Holding the rank of colonel he will be given a military burial on Tuesday in St Petersburg.
