It is an understatement to say that the “partial mobilization” decreed by Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to reinforce his troops on the Ukrainian front does not unleash the enthusiasm of his population. Everything is fine to dodge this decision that must send 300,000 reservists to war.
There are those who demonstrate, those who plan to take off to leave Russia and those who simply think of using their connections to avoid enlistment. Such is the case of Nikolaï Peskov, the son of Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, caught on Wednesday in flagrante delicto by the authors of a hoax.
“You should understand who I am”
The operation was revealed by independent Russian media The inside, and was edited by Dmitry Nizovtsev for his PopularPolitics YouTube channel, which is close to regime opponent Alexei Navalny. The host thus called Nikolai Peskov live. Posing as an officer, Major Anton Matrynov, and assuring his interlocutor that he had summoned him for his enlistment, he launched:
“First, why didn’t you call back? And second, are you coming to the draft office tomorrow at 10:00? We’re waiting for you.”
Nikolaï Peskov’s response is full of height, as evidenced by the translation of the video delivered to our antenna this Thursday morning. “Obviously, I won’t come to the police station,” he replies before remembering that he is especially well-born and therefore apparently above these contingencies: “You must understand that I am Mr. Peskov, and it is not really for me. “
“Anyway, I’m going to solve this problem and I’m going to solve it on another level,” he says.
“I am not a simple soldier”
But Nikolaï Peskov is not sure whether to tick the boxes for this partial mobilization. In the rest of the dialogue, broadcast here on TF1, he says, “I have to understand what I have to do and how I have to do it.” “I need to understand in general what is going on and what my rights are. Take me tomorrow, believe me, neither you nor I need that.”
“I have no problem defending my homeland, but I need to understand the feasibility of my presence there,” he insists again.
Nikolai, 32, served in the army, in one of the divisions in charge of nuclear missiles, specifies here the daily mail. Suffice to say, he seems qualified to re-enlist. He soon qualified his refusal by saying, “I will do as I am told. If Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin says I have to go, I will go.” However, it is not about passing as a soldier like the others, Nikolai Peskov emphasizes that he “is not a simple soldier”.
The revealer of a divided society
Alexeï Navalny reacted to this hoax, extending his statements to the collective catastrophe that according to him is coming.
“I fear a great tragedy and many deaths,” he said, denouncing a “criminal war.”
This Thursday morning on BFMTV, Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean, director of the Russia/New Independent States Center of the French Institute of International Relations, considered that this hoax that mixes politics and satire reveals the fractures that break Russian society.
“It says a lot about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. There is an elite Russia that is not directly affected by the decisions he makes and everyone else who has to pay the piper.”
“It feeds the feeling of injustice in the population, and can only reinforce the discontent in the face of this war,” he concluded.
Source: BFM TV
