Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus on Thursday claimed they had duped Poland’s top diplomat into thinking he was speaking with a former Ukrainian president on a video call.
In the hoax video released on Russian social media, whose authenticity Poland has not confirmed, the discussion in English covers NATO, Polish support for Ukraine and the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
The video only shows the face of a person resembling Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. At the other end is the voice of someone impersonating former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.
“We don’t do fake calls. All conversations are real,” Vovan and Lexus told AFP in a statement.
“Even (Polish) President (Andrzej) Duda will confirm this,” they added, referring to when they had duped the head of state, whose office confirmed the prank at the time.
They did not respond to a question about when the call allegedly took place.
The video surfaced on Thursday, as Sikorski hosted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Warsaw for talks.
Polish foreign ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski said he was not aware of the video.
In “a situation where mainly the Russian side has at its disposal deepfakes, anyone can talk to anyone today,” he told the Polish news agency PAP.
The person the pranksters claim to be Sikorski spoke in the video of the now defunct Nord Stream pipelines that were blown up in September 2022.
“We now know that the Americans had advanced knowledge of it and didn’t stop it,” the person said of the sabotage.
“In Poland, the way we feel about it, whoever did it, did a good job.”
The speaker also described as “somewhat hypocritical” the NATO military alliance’s attitude towards the possibility of Ukrainian membership.
“What NATO is saying, you can become a member of NATO once you’ve won the war and you don’t need it,” the person said, calling Ukraine’s potential membership “a bargaining chip with Russia”.
The person resembling Sikorski also said “there is no willingness to have a war with Russia in Western Europe. This is an absolute red line”.
He also said putting Polish soldiers in Ukraine was “not doable” and rejected the possibility of stationing US nuclear weapons in Poland, saying “it won’t happen”.
Confirmed victims of the pranksters, real names Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, include Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pop star Elton John and Prince Harry.
