Nikolai Peskov, the 33-year-old son of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, announced that he had joined and served in Wagner mercenary group in Ukraine ca. six months.

“it was my duty. I couldn’t sit and watch friends and other people go there,” he said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper neighboring the Kremlin.

It was his decision to join Wagner, but, as he says, he didn’t know how to do it, so “I turned to my father… and he helped me.”

He claimed to have used false identification to keep his Kremlin ties from being revealed among his Wagner associates, details he did not reveal in the interview as it would likely be needed again, he said.

It is not customary for a member of the Russian elite to respond to the call to the army, much less to join Wagner, since many are known to have fled abroad to avoid participation in the war.

Nikolai Peskov speaks excellent English, having studied in London for many years and also worked as a correspondent for the state-run RT.

Both he and his father are under sanctions imposed by the West in retaliation for the war in Ukraine.

The claims of Nikolai Peskov coincide in time with the great, new recruitment campaignwith government campaigns calling on men to do their “patriotic duty” in the conflict in Ukraine.

Wagner, which recruited thousands of prisoners from prisons after heavy losses in Ukraine, is called a “private army company” in Russia and is now world famous for committing alleged war crimes and other violations.

Source: BBC