The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain became a victim of pranksters who pretended to be the former president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. This was announced by the official representative of the British Foreign Ministry.
The conversation took place via video link, but it did not last long. He added that the pranksters arranged the call through text messages.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that a person clearly resembling Poroshenko appeared on the video, but Cameron soon suspected that he was dealing with fraudsters. The foreign minister stopped answering when the caller asked him for other people's contact details.
The Foreign Office says the conversation took place "in recent days", but does not specify who may have actually called Cameron, what they talked about or how they managed to establish contact with representatives of the ministry.
Britain's Foreign Office says it decided to publicly report the incident "in case the video of the Foreign Secretary is manipulated and subsequently used, and so that others are aware of the risk".
"The Minister of Foreign Affairs regrets his mistake, but believes that it is necessary to talk about such behavior in public, and that we should strengthen the fight against disinformation," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
In the past, Russian telephone pranksters Oleksiy Stolyarov and Volodymyr Kuznetsov, known by the nicknames Lexus and Vovan, have repeatedly spoken to Western officials posing as different politicians. So, it is quite possible that they were the pranksters this time as well.
In 2018, Lexus and Vovan called Boris Johnson, who was then British Foreign Minister, introducing himself as Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
In March 2022, the then British Defense Minister Ben Wallace had a conversation with these pranksters who pretended to be the Prime Minister of Ukraine.
In December 2023, Vaughan and Lexus spoke to then Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. According to Vardakar, they posed as a diplomat from the African Union and used an AI-generated image for convincing.
And the other day, Vovan and Lexus played a prank on the president of the Davos Forum, Klaus Schwab.
Schwab, in particular, gave details of his conversation with the now deceased Henry Kissinger regarding Russia.
"I asked him about relations between the Western world and Russia. And he argued that there must be a compromise. He probably reasoned that way. Ukraine has no chance of winning, and we must prevent Russia from winning. So, we have to create such a win-win situation, to prevent our defeat. He was in favor of freezing the war. And I'm bringing everything to a compromise, that should be the end of it," said Schwab.
