Prank call confusion for Ukraine president

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (L) was meant to speak to Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev (R)

Ukraine's foreign ministry has described an apparent prank call to President Petro Poroshenko as a "provocation".

The president's website had posted details of a telephone discussion on trade between Mr Poroshenko and his Kyrgyz counterpart, Almazbek Atambayev, on Tuesday. But that was news to Kyrgyz officials, who denied that any such conversation took place. "This information is not correct - someone probably played a joke on the Ukrainian leader," said Sapar Isakov, head of the Kyrgyz president's foreign policy department.

By Wednesday, any mention of the call had been removed from Mr Poroshenko's official website. Ukraine's foreign minister then spoke to his Kyrgyz counterpart - presumably the real one - to work out what happened, tweeting that they will "investigate this provocation".

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maryana Betsa says the apparent prank appears to have been designed to interfere with plans to introduce a UN resolution on alleged human rights violations in Crimea since its annexation by Russia in 2014. Mr Poroshenko was making a series of phone calls on the issue, she says.

Some Ukrainian websites suspect that notorious Russian pranksters Alexei Stolyarov and Vladimir Krasnov, known as Lexus and Vovan, are behind it all. On Monday, Mr Stolyarov posted a short Facebook message seeking experts on Kyrgyzstan, according to Ukraine's Vesti news website. But when journalists contacted the pair, they denied any involvement in the call.

They've been involved in several pranks involving world leaders, on one occasion impersonating Vladimir Putin and, earlier this year, Petro Poroshenko.

While it may still be unclear who was on the other end of the line, there's an intense information war under way between Russia and Ukraine. This week, Ukrainian hackers claimed to have accessed the emails of a senior Kremlin official, but said they have no link to the security services.

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