Britain accuses Russia for video joke on top official

LONDON (AP) — Britain accused Russia on Tuesday of spreading disinformation by producing a video of the British Defense Secretary talking to an impostor posing as the prime minister of Ukraine.

Two videos of Secretary Ben Wallace talking to the impostor were posted on the YouTube channel of a duo of Russian pranksters named Vovan and Lexus. The British government claims that Russia speculated the joke to sow misinformation and mock Britain.

A video, which begins with images of Buckingham Palace and the Parliament in London, shows Wallace, in Poland, talking via video call to someone who says that Ukraine wants to advance its “nuclear program” to protect itself from Russia, something that the Russian state press has said without foundation in the past.

Another video shows Wallace apparently suggesting that “we are running out” of NLAW anti-tank weapons, after sending 4,000 such devices to Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion.

The British Ministry of Defense denounced that the videos were published “to obfuscate and manipulate the truth.”

“Everyone should be skeptical before reporting or accepting as true those videos armed by the Russian state,” the ministry said in a statement.

He asserted that Britain “has enough armaments to defend both the national security of the United Kingdom and to fulfill our commitments to NATO.”

The government has launched an investigation into how the impostor, posing as Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, was able to make a video call to Wallace on Thursday. Wallace said he became suspicious and cut off the call when the person “started asking misleading questions.”

There was another fake call to Home Secretary Priti Patel, and Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said she was also tried to trick.

The British government accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of distractions “in order to hide the magnitude of the conflict and Russia's failures on the battlefield.”

“This is an attempt to distract attention from their illegal activities in Ukraine, from their human rights violations, and we are not going to deviate from our intention to ensure that Putin fails in Ukraine,” said Max Blain, spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Vovan and Lexus have on previous occasions cheated on other celebrities such as Prince Henry, Elton John and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The duo — their real names with Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov — have been accused of having ties to Russian security services, which they deny.