The Kremlin’s attempts to present the children of the Russian elite as equal participants in the war against Ukraine along with ordinary soldiers have failed, according to The Moscow Times experts.

Instead, they say, the effort has raised more questions than answers.

Last Saturday, the leader of Wagner’s mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin said that Mykola Peskov, the son of President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmytro Peskov, was “knee-deep in dirt and shit” on the battlefield with his mercenaries for almost six months.

A few days later, Dmitry Peskov confirmed this to the Russian media, but did not provide details.

The contradictions in the story of Peskov Jr. joining Wagner’s group could backfire for the Kremlin as it tries to galvanize ordinary Russians into fighting in the face of a Ukrainian counterattack.

Abbas Gallyamov, an independent expert and former speechwriter for Putin, said the revelation about the son of a high-ranking Kremlin official who fought in Ukraine was no accident.

One of the main complaints Russians have against the regime is its tendency to pass the negative consequences of its decisions onto society, while officials reap the benefits, Galyamov told The Moscow Times.

“In the conditions of war, this injustice is perceived especially acutely, because it is not about economic income, but about life itself,” Gallyamov said.

“That’s why the Kremlin launched a project where representatives of the elite go to the front and act as “participants” [operațiunea militară specială]”.”

Was the Kremlin afraid of the Ukrainian counteroffensive?

Experts say fourteen months of war have severely depleted Russian forces, and the Ukrainian counteroffensive has sent a signal to Moscow that it needs to strengthen its forces.

At the same time, the Kremlin’s war narrative and recruitment announcements failed to persuade Russian men to join the army.

To increase recruiting opportunities for the army, the Kremlin quietly drafted laws to digitize conscription and mobilization, which were quickly approved by the State Duma this month.

The news that Peskov Jr. had fought in Ukraine was apparently part of the Kremlin’s efforts to boost conscription.

Peskov Jr. did not want to join the army in September

But 33-year-old Mykola Peskov, who spent several years in London and then worked as a correspondent for the pro-Kremlin TV channel RT, was the subject of a prank call in September in which he apparently did not want to join the army.

In a telephone conversation broadcast live on YouTube, an associate of Alexei Navalny introduced himself to Mykola Peskov as a military recruiter.

Peskov Jr. refused the interlocutor’s request to appear before the draft commission, promising to “solve the issue at another level”, probably alluding to his influential father.

The prankster also called Oleksiy Mishustin, the son of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who said he was studying at university and “still has no desire to fight.”

Following Prigozhin’s statement this week, Peskov Jr. told the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda that he was already planning to join Wagner on the day of the prank phone call.

“I felt that it was my duty. I couldn’t sit back and watch my friends and other people go there,” he said, claiming he had “done a feat” and even received a Medal of Valor.

Propagandists quickly seized the initiative

Russian propagandists quickly picked up the story about Peskov Jr.’s alleged military service.

The head of RT, Margarita Simonyan, stated that she had long known about Peskov Jr.’s service with Wagner, as his father told her about it personally during a friendly dinner, but asked not to make the information public. But in her statement, she called Peskov Jr. “Sasha”, noted the Russian BBC journalist.

And the presenter of the state TV channel “Russia-1” Volodymyr Solovyov published an interview of Peskov Jr. in the combat zone, which was allegedly filmed in the winter at the front.

“His name appeared recently, fighting on Wagner, he became very famous. But what other choice does he have? He is the grandson of the legendary marshal, the son of a well-known official of the Russian state. This is Mykola Dmytrovych Peskov,” Solovyov said.

Experts doubt that Peskov Jr. made it to the front

Prigozhin claims that Peskov’s son fought in Ukraine as part of a rocket launcher for almost six months, but served under a different name, using “false documents” to hide his identity.

“He [Dmitri Peskov] he came to me and said: “Why don’t you take him as a simple gunner.” And the boy served like no other. Just a simple shooter, knee deep in mud and shit, piloting a hurricane [lansator de rachete]Prigozhin said, adding that Peskov Sr. “once had the reputation of a total liberal.”

However, independent experts doubt that Peskov’s son ever made it to the front line.

Ruslan Leviev, an independent military analyst and founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team, said that the launchers of the Uragan anti-aircraft missile systems are usually located dozens of kilometers from the battlefield.

“These [sisteme] they are quite far from the front line (they have a firing range of up to 35 kilometers), the risks are minimal, and I don’t understand why it is about knee-deep in mud,” Leviev wrote on Twitter.

Did he sell the car while he was at the front?

In addition, the claim of Peskov Jr.’s long stay at the front seems inconsistent with the fact that in the fall and winter of 2022-2023, the Tesla Model X he owns was repeatedly caught speeding in Moscow, which led to more fines.

And on March 28, when Peskov Jr. was at the front, his car was sold to a man from the Tver region in northwestern Russia, the independent information station “Sota” reported.

“It’s not done for long. It is clear that they wanted to show that the children of the elite are also involved in the operation [militară]. But there is a question as to how this is done, since more than a year has passed since the beginning of the war. And the reaction to it is unclear,” a former high-ranking government official told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity.

“If it was done cleanly, it would be effective. But since there were many revelations that it was a fake, and Peskov Jr. had never actually been to Ukraine, the real effect was instead negative,” Gallyamov told The Moscow Times.

“The Russian people are used to the fact that the government is constantly building Potemkin villages, so as soon as justified objections appear, people easily believe them,” he said.

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