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Russian prankster denies reports of Kyrgyzstan’s role in Poroshenko prank

The man tricked Ukrainian leader Poroshenko into believing that he was talking to the president of Kyrgyzstan

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Nikolai Lazarenko/Ukrainian president's press service/TASS

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko

© Nikolai Lazarenko/Ukrainian president's press service/TASS

KIEV, November 19. /TASS/. A Russian prankster who earlier made a phone call to the president of Ukraine pretending to be the Kyrgyz leader on Friday dismissed as "total nonsense" Ukraine’s allegations that Kyrgyz government officials helped him.

"(Ukrainian) president’s press secretary (Svyatoslav) Tsegolko accuses people who had no involvement whatsoever, who did not help us at all. We have no contacts with Kyrgyzstan, let alone with Kyrgyz officials," pranker Alexei Stolyarov said, describing the allegations as "total nonsense."

He also denied Ukraine’s accusations that the record was doctored.

‘We only removed certain speech patterns by Poroshenko, so that the record did not sound long and boring," the pranker said.

On November 2, the official website of the Ukrainian president has published an official statement about a phone conversation between Poroshenko and Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev that focused on bilateral trade and economic relations. When asked by a TASS reporter later in the day, the deputy head of the Kyrgyz presidential administration denied that the conversation took place and suggested that it could be a phone prank.

The statement was removed from Poroshenko’s website the following day.

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