As Russian Officials Rail Against West, Their Kids Vacation in NATO Nations

The children of Russian officials who railed against the West during the launch of President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have taken frequent vacations in NATO nations prior to and throughout the conflict, an investigation has found.

The Insider, an independent Russian-language news outlet, scoured the Instagram accounts of individuals connected with the children of top-ranking Russian officials including Foreign Intelligence Director Sergei Naryshkin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and Vladimir Dzhabarov, a senior member of the Russian Federation Council.

It found that some of their children had vacationed in NATO member countries including Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the United States, after Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

While the Instagram account of Naryshkin's daughter, Veronika, is private, the news outlet analyzed vacation pictures taken by her close friend, Victoria Kosolapova. The pair reportedly travel together frequently.

Photos uploaded on Kosolapova's account on Instagram—which is banned in Russia—show the pair in Turkey.

They also snapped photographs together in Italy, and Greece, The Insider found, even as Naryshkin in July 2022 accused the military alliance of "waging a hybrid war against both Russia and our ally, the Republic of Belarus."

Naryshkin has repeated the Kremlin line that Russia attacked Ukraine in an effort to "de-Nazify" the country and remove its "neo-Nazi" leaders from power.

He claimed in April 2022 in an article published on the website of Russia's National Defense magazine that Western nations are at risk of falling under "Nazi" control.

The Russian intelligence chief argued that "it's possible that [the end of an awakening in the West] will end not by the coming to power in the U.S. and European states of nationally oriented, sensible and realist politicians, but by the establishment of complete and undisguised liberal-Nazi dictatorships in the Western area."

The Insider also found that Ksenia Shoigu, daughter of the Russian defense minister took a lavish vacation in Dubai to ring in the New Year, staying at Caesars Palace Dubai.

And Alexander Dzhabarov, the son of sanctioned Vladimir Dzhabarov, a deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, recently took vacations in Turkey and the United States.

"While the senator was exposing the 'pro-American' opposition, his son Alexander Dzhabarov, by coincidence, traveled precisely in America," the outlet wrote.

In August 2021, Alexander Dzhabarov and his wife visited San Francisco and Los Angeles, and in recent months, he visited Turkey and Dubai, it found.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian foreign ministry for comment.

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