Russian pranksters who posed as the Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko managed to contact Angela Merkel by phone to discuss events in Ukraine and belarusalthough the former German chancellor was cautious during the call.
Merkel’s office said Monday that the former German leader received a call on January 12 from someone claiming to be Poroshenko. The conversation was assisted by a German-Ukrainian interpreter from the language service of the German Foreign Ministry.
In an emailed statement, the office said Merkel later informed the ministry about the “impression she got from the caller during the call” but did not provide further details about what it was.
Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, known as Vovan and Lexus, posted on their Telegram channel what they described as excerpts from the call.. The duo have previously embarrassed European politicians, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Polish President Andrzej Duda and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as well as Elton John and Prince Harry, with similar hoax calls.
In the recording, Merkel says — as she has done publicly before — that the much-criticized Minsk peace deal bought Ukraine valuable time. Merkel and former French President François Hollande brokered the peace deal with Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2015. Merkel also criticizes the repression in autocratic Belarus.
Poroshenko was Ukraine’s president from 2014 to 2019. Merkel led Germany from 2005 to late 2021.
In June 2022, Vovan and Lexus stated to the German public television program “Kontraste” ARD be behind the series of video calls to European mayors, including the one in Berlin, Franziska Giffeyposing as kyiv alderman Vitali Klitschko.
“I don’t want to say how we did it, but it was easy,” said one of the comedians, Alexei Stolyarov (Lexus), in a telephone conversation with the political program on German television.
In order to credibly deceive their interlocutors – including the mayors of Madrid, Budapest, Warsaw and Vienna – they prepared well and resorted to so-called social engineering.
For this it will rcollect available information about people and their environment and falsifyfor example, the senders of the emails to thus convince the recipients.
Art resides in illusion and “it always works,” said Stolyarov.
With information from AP
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Source-www.infobae.com