Kremlin accused over hoax call to Boris Johnson as Russian prankster discusses Putin and Salisbury poisoning
A prank call to Boris Johnson has triggered a diplomatic row after the Kremlin was accused of being behind the “desperate” stunt.
The Foreign Secretary was caught out by a Russian prankster who kept him on the phone for 18 minutes by pretending to be the new Prime Minister of Armenia.
Mr Johnson unwittingly discussed President Vladimir Putin and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal before he rumbled the hoax and ended the call.
The Foreign Office believes the pranksters, who have previously caught out other politicians, made the call with the blessing of the Kremlin to “save face” after it was shamed over the Salisbury attack.
A recording of the phone call, which happened last week, was put online the day after Yulia Skripal made her first public statement about her poisoning, in which she said she had been the victim of an attempted assassination.
It also came on the day that Dutch investigators revealed evidence that a Russian military missile shot down flight MH-17 over Ukraine in 2014.
The pranksters had tried to contact the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson by email days earlier, posing as the Armenian defence minister, but alert Ministry of Defence officials did not fall for the trick.
Alexei Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov, who call themselves Lexus and Vovan, are the two men who made the call to Mr Johnson last week.
Their previous victims include Sir Elton John, the Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the US Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
They are understood to have convinced the Europe minister Sir Alan Duncan in a previous call that one of them was Nikol Pashinyan, the Armenian premier. It enabled them to get through to Mr Johnson’s private office in a second call.
Speaking in English with a Russian accent, the caller asked Mr Johnson for advice on what he should say to Vladimir Putin when he met him, as well as discussing the Skripal case.
Mr Johnson responded by saying that “we will continue to tighten the squeeze on some of the oligarchs who surround Putin”, adding: “You throw a stone in Kensington and you’ll hit an oligarch.”
He also said Britain was “almost 100 per cent sure” Russia was behind the Salisbury poisonings and said: “If I have a message to Putin, it’s that we don’t want a cold war but we do want to see an improvement in the way Russia behaves.”
A senior diplomatic source said: “This seems to be the latest desperate attempt by the Kremlin to save face after it was internationally shamed in the wake of the Skripal attack.
“Boris rumbled them pretty quickly and ended the call. It is tragic to see a major international power reduced to failed pranks you would usually only see on Trigger Happy TV.”
Stolyarov and Kuznetsov have previously denied links to the Russian security services.
The Telegraph understands that the hoaxers contacted Sir Alan, who was taken in by them and arranged for the "prime minister" to call Mr Johnson's private office.
Mr Johnson believed he was answering a routine call to congratulate a new national leader.
Sources close to Foreign Secretary insisted he quickly realised something was wrong and started asking questions to verify the caller's identity before ending the call.
Details of the call were first published in the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, in which Stolyarov said Mr Johnson had been a "smart diplomat, an intellectual" who did not fall into the trap of making indiscreet comments.
He added that it was "probably the first time the person we talked to was not a fool".
When the hoaxers called Sir Elton, they convinced him he was talking to Vladimir Putin and that the Russian President had agreed to meet him to discuss LGBT issues.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "Obviously this shouldn’t have happened and an investigation is underway to determine the circumstances around this call and to make sure that this does not happen again.”
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