RUSSIA: The son of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson stated in an interview that was published on Saturday that he had operated in Ukraine as an assumed-name artilleryman with the Wagner mercenary organisation.
The 33-year-old son of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed to a privately owned publication that he had served in Ukraine, marking a rare public instance of a prominent Russian official’s son participating in the conflict.
In an interview, Peskov, whose father has been Putin’s spokesman since 2008, stated, “It was on my initiative. It was my duty… I couldn’t sit to one side, watching as friends and others went off there.”
He stated that he had completed his contract under an assumed name for just under half a year in order to conceal his real identity. The newspaper said that he was awarded a medal for his bravery.
When asked how his father felt about his service, Nikolai responded, “He’s proud of me, I think.” “My father told me that I made the right decision.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Wagner, stated that Dmitry Peskov had contacted him and requested to hire his son as an artilleryman.
“Of all my acquaintances, just one person, Dmitry Sergeyvich Peskov, who at one time was reputed to be an absolute liberal, sent his son.” “He came to me and said, “Take him on as a simple artilleryman,” Prigozhi stated in a video shared on Telegram.
Nikolai Peskov was born in 1990 and resided in Britain for the ten years that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, per the Kommersant newspaper. After that, he went back to Russia, where, between 2010 and 2012, he worked with the strategic rocket forces.
In 2022, an associate of imprisoned opposition politician Alexei Navalny made a phone call to Peskov Junior, demanding that he report to a designated office while posing as a Russian military officer.
According to a call recording made public, Peskov assured him that he would not be departing and that the issue would be resolved on a different level.
Following the war, the United States imposed sanctions on Dmitry Peskov, his wife, and their two adult children, Nikolai and Elizaveta, as per the U.S. Treasury. Peskov worked in the foreign ministry in Moscow and abroad before moving up through the Kremlin.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has prompted one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe since World War Two and the biggest standoff between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Up to 354,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the Ukraine War, which is moving towards protracted warfare that may last as long as 2023, as per troves of U.S. intelligence documents that have been leaked online.
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