Son of Vladimir Putin’s Spokesman Says He Served With Wagner in Ukraine

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The son of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman stated in an interview revealed on Saturday that he had served in Ukraine underneath an assumed identify as an artilleryman within the Wagner mercenary drive, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of many deadliest European conflicts since World Warfare Two and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West because the 1962 Cuban Missile Disaster.

As many as 354,000 Russian and Ukrainian troopers have been killed or injured within the Ukraine struggle which is grinding in direction of a protracted battle that will final properly past 2023, based on a trove of U.S. intelligence paperwork posted on-line.

Nikolai Peskov, the 33-year-old son of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, instructed the privately-owned newspaper that he had served in Ukraine, a uncommon, public instance of the son of a senior Russian official combating within the struggle.

“It was on my initiative,” Peskov, whose father has served as Putin’s spokesman since 2008, stated in an interview. “I thought of it my obligation.”

He stated that he had served out his contract for a bit underneath half a 12 months underneath an assumed identify to cover his true id. He acquired a medal for bravery, the newspaper stated.

Requested about his father’s views of his service, Nikolai stated: “He is happy with me, I feel. My father instructed me that I made the correct resolution.”

Wagner’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, stated Dmitry Peskov had approached him and requested him to take his son on as an artilleryman.

“Of all my acquaintances, only one particular person, Dmitry Sergeyvich Peskov, who at one time was reputed to be an absolute liberal, despatched his son. He got here to me and stated: ‘Take him on as a easy artilleryman’,” Prigozhin stated in a video posted on Telegram.

Nikolai Peskov was born in 1990 and lived in Britain within the decade following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, based on the Kommersant newspaper. He then returned to Russia and served within the strategic rocket forces from 2010 to 2012.

In 2022, an affiliate of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny pretending to be a Russian navy official phoned up Peskov junior and demanded he report back to a draft workplace. Peskov instructed him that he wouldn’t be going wherever and would resolve the scenario at a special degree, based on a recording of the decision posted on-line.

Dmitry Peskov, who served within the overseas ministry in Moscow and overseas earlier than rising by way of the Kremlin, was sanctioned by the USA shortly after the struggle, alongside together with his spouse and two grownup kids, Nikolai and Elizaveta, based on the U.S. Treasury.

(Reporting by Man Faulconbridge; Enhancing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

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