Russian President Vladimir Putin ’s daughter has defended Russia's war in Ukraine and slammed his detractors in messages online.
Maria Vorontsova, 37, the Kremlin leader's eldest daughter from his first marriage, has been identified as “Maria V” on the Telegram social media app.
Screenshots of Vorontsova’s comments were published by Dmitry Kolezev, editor-in-chief of Republic, a Russian independent media outlet.
While he said he did "not have 100 per cent confirmation" that it was Putin's daughter, sources in the chat group told him it was her.
The messages were posted on a Telegram channel for ex-students of Moscow State University’s medical department, where Vorontsova graduated in 2011 as a paediatric endocrinologist.
She wrote that the West had “always done everything possible to ensure” that Russia failed as a state and it will continue to do so.
Kolezev said she generally seems to back the Kremlin narrative that Russia "is not an aggressor, but a victim, and is forced to defend itself.
She also criticised a chat member for using the word “annexation” to describe Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014, insisting that the term overlooked “the will of the people”.
She has also repeated the Russian military’s claims about supposed US bioweapons laboratories on Ukrainian territory and claimed that the CIA "controls the Russian mass media and opposition."
Vorontsova strongly criticises Western attitudes about Russia and her father. She said: "Blaming everything and putting all responsibility on one person is the same as putting your faith in one person, like a tsar.
"Same crap. If you want to set yourself apart from tsarism’s admirers… well, this ain’t the way to do it. We are not like the Germans in the 1930s, rather like the ones whom they banished."
His other daughter Maria Vorontsova is banned by her father from travelling to western countries.
Another investigation yesterday revealed that Putin’s other daughter Katerina Tikhonova flew to Munich "more than 50 times" in two years.
Putin has been vocal about his hatred toward pro-western Russians, he said their hunger for European cuisine and climates meant “their mind is there, not here, with our people”.
It also revealed that her boyfriend, Igor Zelensky, shares a name with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
While his daughters are never publicly pictured or named in Russia, sanctions have targeted Maria Vorontsova, 36, and Katerina Tikhonova, 35.
One US official said: "These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people. Some of them are responsible for providing the support necessary to underpin Putin’s war on Ukraine.
"This action cuts them off from the US financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States. We believe that many of Putin's assets are hidden with family members, and that's why we're targeting them."
