He thought he was talking to the former Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko.
The former head of state François Hollande was trapped in early February by the duo of Russian comedians “Vovan” and “Lexus” who posed as former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. A farce relayed by certain media and on social networks since Thursday, April 6.
The recording, of about fifteen minutes, is a videoconference interview on the situation in Ukraine. The comedians carried out their prank using probable deepfake technology.
“I had no idea it was a handling. [La prise de contact] passed by a person who introduced himself as Poroshenko’s chief of staff; we checked that it was really him, we didn’t no reason to suspect anything”commented the former President of the Republic with our colleagues from CheckNews.
Elon Musk reacts
During this exchange, the fake Petro Porochencko evokes three times the Minsk agreements, signed in 2015. Internet users seized this video. According to them, the former president would admit that the Minsk agreements were a strategy of NATO to militarize Ukraine. “François Hollande admits that the Minsk agreements were made not to be respected, but to prepare Ukraine for the offensive!”, tweeted the leader of the far-right movement Les Patriotes, Florian Philippot. Elon Musk asked in a tweet if these remarks were “true”.
“In none of my words, because that’s what they’re trying to emphasize, I didn’t suggest that we would have signed the Minsk agreements to allow the Ukrainians to prepare the war”, replied François Hollande to CheckNews. He claims to have defended a position that he holds “in all the interviews, on the Minsk agreements and on Russian responsibility”.
The duo is not at its first attempt, and has already managed to deceive dozens of personalities. In November 2022, Russian comedians called Polish President Andrzej Duda, posing as Emmanuel Macron. The seven-minute conversation took place the day a military projectile killed two people on Polish territory.