Who is Dmitry Peskov?

Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, made a startling admission in an interview with the UK’s Sky News on Thursday night. Russia had suffered “significant losses of troops” in Ukraine, he said. The casualties were “a huge tragedy for us”. According to the Kremlin, the official death toll is 1,351 – far lower than most estimates.

After a series of boilerplate answers (in which he claimed that atrocities alleged to have been committed by Russian troops in occupation of Ukrainian towns and villages were “fakes and lies”), towards the end of the half-hour interview he said that he hoped Russia would complete its war aims “in the coming days”.

His meaning was quite clear – the “special operation” has not worked, lots of Russians have died, and now it’s time to get a hurry on and wrap it all up. After the interview was broadcast, Russian nationalist Twitter went ballistic at Peskov for his comments. One account with an especially large following effectively called for him to be lynched.

Peskov’s immediate boss is called Alexey Gromov, labelled by various outlets as the Kremlin’s “propaganda man” and who reports directly to Putin. Peskov is just a couple of rungs away from the President himself on the Kremlin’s “vertical of power”. So was he taking an extraordinary risk in the interview, or simply spinning the President’s line?

Things are rarely straightforward with Peskov, as Angus Roxburgh (the BBC’s man in Moscow in the 90s) found out when he took on a job in a PR firm from 2006 to 2009 representing the Kremlin, in a bid by the authorities to burnish Russia’s international image. In his memoir, Moscow Calling, published in 2017, and in more detail in his 2021 biography, The Strongman: Vladimir Putin and the struggle for Russia, Roxburgh gives us a series of fascinating insights into the various personalities that make up Putin’s inner circle, focusing especially on Peskov.

Unlike Sergei Lavrov, who showed no interest in being advised by foreigners to do anything whatsoever, Peskov was more willing to take advice from a western journalist. Peskov talked more to foreign journalists at Roxburgh’s suggestion. As a former career diplomat, fluent in English and Turkish, Peskov, Roxburgh noted, needed little formal media training. He was disciplined, articulate, and could speak with authority, connected as he was to the heart of the Kremlin: Putin himself.

He was greatly in demand from foreign news channels as a result. But throughout Roxburgh’s involvement, he notes that Peskov still struck rather a lone figure. Very few other “high ups” in Russian politics followed his example and talked to western media at all. Indeed, Roxburgh concluded that his time advising the Kremlin had made very little difference – beyond, perhaps, Peskov’s efforts to be a bit savvier. Roxburgh repeatedly urged the administration to be more open, less focused on alleged western hypocrisy, and to focus on improving the country’s human rights record and business environment. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, no one was willing, or brave enough, to deliver the kinds of message that would genuinely change perceptions of Russia. Roxburgh left his role frustrated and saddened by obstructionism at the heart of the regime. 

Nothing much has changed since. And yet – clearly under the most extraordinary pressure – Peskov does seem to have gone off-script, and dramatically so. Here we have Peskov making headlines around the world, effectively breaking a global news story. Will he be rewarded or punished for his frankness?