UK politicians duped into fake calls with Russian imposters as Ben Wallace targeted

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace was the victim of a ‘prank’ where someone pretended to be Prime Minister of Ukraine.

Masquerading as Denys Shmyhal, the faker was able to set up a call with Wallace, asking him a series of questions.

When he worked out what was going on, he terminated the call.

“Today an attempt was made by an imposter claiming to be Ukrainian PM to speak with me. He posed several misleading questions and after becoming suspicious I terminated the call," Wallace revealed on Thursday.

“No amount of Russian disinformation, distortion and dirty tricks can distract from Russia ’s human rights abuses and illegal invasion of Ukraine. A desperate attempt.”

Wallace, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin, is far from the first UK MP to fall victim to such trickery.

Home secretary Priti Patel also admitted that she had also been a victim of a prank call.

She labelled it a "pathetic attempt at such difficult times to divide us", adding: "We stand with Ukraine."

Boris Johnson prank call

Boris Johnson was the target of a phone prank in 2018 (Andrew Parsons / 10 Downing Street)

Back in 2018, now Prime Minister Boris Johnson was duped into discussing the UK’s relationship with Russia with fake callers posing as the prime minister of Armenia.

The audio clip of the conversation was posted online by infamous Russian pranksters Lexus and Vovan.

Johnson appeared to talk about the UK’s dealings with Russia and Vladimir Putin, as well as the Salisbury Novichok attack aimed at the Skripals.

The ‘pranksters’ were pretending to be the newly elected Nikol Pashinyan.

Johnson, the foreign secretary at the time, only hung up when he worked out the call wasn’t genuine - 18 minutes after picking up.

Downing Street launched an investigation into how the tricksters had managed to get on the phone with the foreign secretary.

During the call, Johnson said that Britain “obviously had hoped to have better relations ... than we currently do”.

And, when the impersonator said they hoped Putin would not “poison me with Novichok”, Johnson could be heard letting out a chuckle.

Tom Tugendhat prank call

Priti Patel said she had also been a victim of an attack around the same time as Wallace (Carl Court)

In 2021, a series of senior European MPs were targeted by people using what appeared to be deepfake filters to impersonate Russian opposition political figure Leonid Volkov.

The caller appeared to look almost identical to Volkov, a sentiment that he himself echoed: "Looks like my real face – but how did they manage to put it on the Zoom call? Welcome to the deepfake era …" he wrote.

Among the politicians targeted was the chair of the UK foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat.

After the ‘prank’ he tweeted: “Putin’s Kremlin is so weak and frightened of the strength of @navalny they’re conducting fake meetings to discredit the Navalny team.”