Chairman of the US Committee on Foreign Affairs Benjamin Cardin received a call from an unknown man posing as the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba.
This is reported by The New York Times (NYT) with reference to a letter from the Senate security service and its sources.
Last Thursday, September 19, the senatorʼs office received an email from what appeared to be Dmytro Kuleba asking to connect with him via Zoom. During the next video call, the person looked and spoke like Kuleba.
But the senator became suspicious when the interlocutor began to behave atypically, the Senate security staff wrote in the letter. In particular, "Kuleba" asked "politically colored questions about the upcoming elections" and demanded opinions on sensitive foreign policy issues — for example, whether the senator supports the launch of long-range missiles against Russia.
The senator ended the conversation and reported it to State Department officials, who confirmed that he had spoken with an impostor.
- This is not the first incident when Western officials are called under the guise of Ukrainian officials. For example, in June, the head of the British Foreign Ministry David Cameron became the victim of a prankster who pretended to be ex-president Petro Poroshenko.