The daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov blasted the sanctions taken by the US against her family as “insanity” — claiming they stemmed from “extreme hatred toward everything Russian.”
Elizaveta Peskova, 24, lashed out on Telegram after she and her family had their assets frozen for what the Treasury Department called “enabling Putin’s unjustified and unprovoked war.”
“In my opinion, sanctioning adult children, who’ve already for a long time lead their own personal lives (especially a young girl!) and professional lives – it’s insanity,” she wrote in the wake of the sanctions announced on March 11. “To blame family for ‘enabling war’ is insanity.”
Peskova had initially been among those in the Russian elite to speak out against the war.
She posted “No to war” in Russian to her 237,000 Instagram followers in the early hours of the invasion, before deleting the post.
The daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov complained on Telegram about US sanctions against her family amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty ImagesIn an interview with Business Insider last week, however, Peskova said she wasn’t speaking about the war in Ukraine specifically.
“When I say it, I mean that I am for peace, not only in Ukraine but all around the world,” she said, adding that she would “not talk about the situation going on — I can only speak about the sanctions and I can only say what I feel and what I think about the sanctions.”
Putin has outlawed dissent against his so-called “special operation” in Ukraine, threatening action against even those who call it a war.
In her Telegram post, Peskova called the sanctions a “witch hunt” of “extreme hatred toward everything Russian.”
Peskova accused the US of holding Russia to a double standard, citing a litany of past American military actions.
“I would like to recommend that American politicians pay attention to the children of those who fought in Vietnam, who bombed Yugoslavia, and, of course, not to forget about the [nuclear bombs] ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man,’ [as well as] Korea, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan,” she wrote. “I visited American for the first, and likely the last, time when I was 9 years old, and I can say today that there is nothing good, or bad, over there, that we don’t have here.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin made dissent agains the invasion of Ukraine illegal. Photo by Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images“I would like to add that I am proud of being Russian,” she added.
