Putin spokesman's son says, he served with Russia's Wagner Group in Ukraine
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Nikolai Peskov in an RT screenshot (courtesy: BBC)
Moscow: Nikolai Peskov, the 33-year-old son of Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said that he served with Russian mercenary Wagner Group in Ukraine for six months under a false ID with a different last name, reports BBC and other news portals.
Nikolai made the revelation on Sunday during an interview with the pro-Kremlin daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, the BBC reported.
"I considered it my duty... I couldn't sit on the sidelines and watch friends and other people go there... When I went there, I had to change my last name. Nobody really knew who I was," Nikolai, who speaks fluent English having spent several years as a youth in London, said.
He has worked as a correspondent for Russian state broadcaster RT and both the father-son duo are currently under US sanctions.
Wagner is called a "private military company" in Russia and now has international notoriety for alleged war crimes and other abuses in Ukraine.
It has recruited thousands of convicts from prisons after taking heavy losses.
The BBC said it was unable to verify his claim about serving with Wagner, whose troops have been engaged in intense fighting for months in Bakhmut.
Nikolai told the Russian daily that it was his own decision to join Wagner, but he did not know how to do it, "so I had to turn to my dad... and he helped me with that".
He said he used a false ID so that his Wagner comrades would not detect his Kremlin-related identity.
He however, stopped short of making known during his interview the nick name he had used, because, he might need to use it again.
Nikolai's interview comes after the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said on Friday that the Kremlin spokesman's son had served as a gunner with his mercenary force, CNN reported.
Prigozhin did not specify the period of time he was talking about.
According to Prigozhin, Nikolai Peskov served in PMC Wagner for six months under false documents with a different last name, working as a loader of an ammunition supply vehicle.
The Wagner chief said he attended a three-week training at their base in Molkino and later "left for Luhansk".
According to Prigozhin, Dmitry Peskov had asked him to "take (Nikolai) on as a simple artilleryman".
It is rare for a member of the Russian elite to choose to join Wagner -- many have gone abroad to avoid conscription into the regular army.