Lord Lebedev: ‘My father was in the KGB. But I am not some Russian agent’

The 41-year-old is on friendly terms with Boris Johnson, who elevated him to the House of Lords in 2020 naming him “Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation”.

Born in Moscow, he is the son of Alexander Lebedev, a Russian businessman and former KGB officer. He moved to London aged eight, when his father began working at the KGB rezidentura in the Soviet embassy. He has lived in the UK ever since and became a British citizen in 2010.

Alexander Lebedev was at one point one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs. His first company, the Russian Investment Finance Company, bought the National Reserve Bank in the mid-Nineties and went on to become one of Russia’s largest banks. Its assets included stakes in some of Russia’s largest state-owned companies such as the national airline Aeroflot and the energy giant Gazprom.

Last week, Lord Lebedev used the front page of the Evening Standard newspaper, which he owns as well as the Independent, to carry his 200-word open letter to Vladimir Putin to urge him to end the war.

Its headline read “President Putin, please stop this war”, with Lord Lebedev pleading with the Russian leader to “stop Russians killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters”.

On Friday, he said he wished to provide some context to the “farcical” speculation about him. “I am a British citizen. I first moved here as a child and was educated in the United Kingdom at primary and secondary level. I am proud to be a British citizen and consider Britain my home,” he said.

“I have publicly made clear my condemnation of the war in Ukraine and called on President Putin to end the invasion of the country in the most public way possible through a letter to him published on the front page of the Evening Standard.”

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