LONDON (Reuters) – British defence minister Ben Wallace ordered an inquiry on Thursday after an imposter claiming to be the Ukrainian prime minister contacted him and asked several “misleading questions”.
“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 said on Twitter.
“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.”
A defence source said Wallace had ordered an immediate inquiry into how the incident was allowed to happen.
Wallace is not the first British minister to fall foul of a hoax call.
In May 2018 Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was foreign minister at the time, talked about international relations and rude poetry with a hoax caller who pretended to be the Armenian prime minister.
(Reporting by William James and Elizabeth Piper; editing by Michael Holden)
