Vladimir Putin’s spokesman’s son has claimed that he fought as an artilleryman in Ukraine for the Wagner mercenary force.
Nikolai Peskov, the 33-year-old son of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, told the privately-owned newspaper that he had served in Ukraine, a rare public example of the son of a senior Russian official fighting in the war.
“It was on my initiative,” Peskov, whose father has served as Putin’s spokesman since 2008, said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. “It was my duty... I couldn’t sit to one side watching as friends and others went off there.”
He said that he had served out his contract for a little under half a year under an assumed name to conceal his true identity. He received a medal for bravery, the newspaper said.
Peskov did not reveal where exactly he had served in Ukraine.
Wagner mercenaries are renowned for their brutality, including reportedly executing Russian soldiers who refuse to fight against Ukrainian forces.
The United States has estimated that among the 50,000 Wagner personnel deployed in Ukraine, 10,000 are contractors and 40,000 recruited convicts.
Asked about his father’s views of his service, Nikolai said: “He’s proud of me, I think. My father told me that I made the right decision.”
But a Russian military writer accused Peskov of lying publishing photos of a black electric Tesla in Moscow reportedly owned by Peskov that had been driving around Moscow at the same time he claimed to be in Ukraine.
“It was his favourite car, he always drove himself. From the beginning to the end of 2022, the car moved around Moscow. Data on fines was even kept,” said a post on the channel, named after the Soviet Union’s secret police.
Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said Dmitry Peskov had approached him and asked him to take his son on 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’,” Prigozhin said in a video posted on Telegram.
It appears Dmitry Peskov sent his own son to war after he was the victim of a prank call by a team linked to jailed Putin foe Alexei Navalny. In the call, Nikolai appeared to claim he would pull some strings to avoid being conscripted to invade Ukraine.
The caller posed as an army mobilisation officer and Peskov’s son told him: “You must understand I am Mr Peskov.
“It’s not quite right for me to be there [at the conscription office].
“To cut it short, I’ll be sorting this out at another level.”
Nikolai Peskov was born in 1990 and lived in Britain in the decade following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, according to the Kommersant newspaper. He then returned to Russia and served in the strategic rocket forces from 2010 to 2012.
Dmitry Peskov, who served in the foreign ministry in Moscow and abroad before rising through the Kremlin, was sanctioned by the United States shortly after the war, along with his wife and two adult children, Nikolai and Elizaveta, according to the U.S. Treasury.
