Khrushchev granddaughter ‘embarrassed’ by invasion and says he’d find it ‘despicable’

A Granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev says she is “embarrassed” by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and believes the late Soviet leader would think it “despicable” that a city he rebuilt after the Second World War was being attacked by Russian troops.

Nina Khrushcheva, who was just five or six when her grandfather died in 1971, says he and US president John F Kennedy had resolved the Cuban missile crisis of 1963 in a matter of days because both were both “freaked out” by the prospect of mutual annihilation.

“Now look at it today. Putin is not freaked out,” Ms Khrushcheva tells The Independent. “In fact, he has said he has opened the nuclear arsenal.”