Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has become the latest victim of infamous Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus, who tricked him into holding a conversation with who he believed to be former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.
An edited version of the conversation – in which Sikorski is heard saying NATO has a “hypocritical” attitude to Ukrainian membership and that the US knew in advance of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage – was today published online.
In response, Poland’s foreign ministry called the recording “garbage Russian propaganda by ‘jokers’ sponsored by the security services”. It also said that the conversation had taken place months ago and appears to have been released today to coincide with a visit to Poland by the US secretary of state.
In the video, which lasts just over 24 minutes and is clearly edited in places, Sikorski is seen in what seems to be a video call. He has apparently been tricked into believing that he is speaking with Poroshenko.
It is not clear what Sikorski can see, but at the end of the call he says it was “good to see you”. In response to the release of the video today, foreign ministry spokesman Paweł Wroński said that “in a situation where the Russian side can use deepfakes, anyone can talk with anyone”.
During the conversation, which is conducted entirely in English, Sikorski is heard discussing at length the situation surrounding Ukraine’s war with Russia and Western support for Kyiv.
At one point, he says that “the NATO attitude [to Ukrainian membership] is somewhat hypocritical” because it “is saying ‘you can become a member of NATO once you’ve won the war and don’t need it [anymore]’”.
“I think some of our west European friends are using the idea of Ukraine joining NATO as a bargaining chip with Russia, which is maybe not a bad thing,” said Sikorski.
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He summarised the western European proposal to Russia as: “Withdraw from Ukraine, and we promise you Ukraine will not be in NATO, and if you don’t withdraw, and we freeze the conflict, then the rest of Ukraine [that is not occupied] will be NATO.”
The foreign minister also said that he has “talked to Trump’s people”, who have led him to believe that, if the former president returns to power, he “would threaten Putin with escalation in order to get a better [peace] deal”.
When asked who was responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in 2022, Sikorski said, “we have our suspicions”, but did not go any further. He added, however, that “we now know that the Americans had advanced knowledge of it and didn’t stop it”.
Last year, the Washington Post reported, based on information leaked online, that the US learned three months before the sabotage about a Ukrainian plan to attack the pipeline.
"Poland did not participate in anything" relating to the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022, says deputy PM @KGawkowski.
He says a claim of Polish involvement by a former German intelligence chief is the "sound of Russian disinformation" https://t.co/uOHjbf9CTq
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 16, 2024
In other parts of the conversation, the foreign minister said that there is “zero willingness [from Poland] to send its own forces to Ukraine” and that doing so would just “confirm what Russian propaganda has been saying all along”.
However, he reiterated Poland’s support for plans – publicly announced earlier this year – to train Ukrainians based in the EU, who could then contribute to the war effort in Ukraine.
“There was an idea that those who avoid the draft [in Ukraine] should not get social security payments [if they live in the EU], which I think is correct,” added Sikorski. “People should not be paid for being draft dodgers.”
Finally, he criticised Polish President Andrzej Duda – who is aligned with the opposition – for his suggestions that Poland would be willing to host US nuclear weapons. Such talk is “unhelpful” and even “harmful”, said Sikorski.
“Several thousand” Ukrainians in Poland have registered to join a Ukrainian Legion that will serve in the defence of Ukraine, says @sikorskiradek.
The volunteers will be trained and equipped by Poland, with Sikorski urging other countries to do the same https://t.co/ydeUuQZN0p
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 11, 2024
Duda himself has also twice fallen victim to Vovan and Lexus, most recently in November 2022, when he was tricked into believing he was speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron. At that time, Sikorski, who was then in opposition, shared the recording and mocked Duda for falling for the prank.
Other world leaders tricked by the pranksters in the past include Macron himself, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Kamala Harris when she was a vice presidential nominee.
In response to the recording released today, Wroński, the foreign ministry spokesman, said that nothing Sikorski had said in the conversation differed from what he had said in public interviews.
He also said that the recording had been made months ago. It was probably released today, said Wroński, because US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving in Poland for talks, reports news website CyberDefence24.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Poland, where he has declared that "Polish-American relations have never been better".
His Polish counterpart, @sikorskiradek, has urged the West to lift restrictions on long-range weapons given to Ukraine https://t.co/s11YhzKbd4
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) September 12, 2024
Main image credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
