Government changes meetings protocol after Taoiseach duped in Russian hoax call

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar: 'Because of the advancements in technology, a lot more important things are going to have to happen in person.' Picture: Niall Carson/PA

The Government has changed its procedures for setting meetings with the Taoiseach after Leo Varadkar was duped into a fake video conference with Russian pranksters.

The two pranksters, Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, have published the call on the right-wing video website Rumble.

The Taoiseach believed the call was taking place with diplomats from the African Union Commission, but he ended the call after 15 minutes upon realising something was amiss.

Mr Varadkar was among a group of senior European officials who had fallen foul of the same trick.

He said the incident highlighted the potential threat from artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfakes.

“They used an AI image of someone who works with the African Union,” said Mr Varadkar. “They’ve doctored it and edited it, so what you’re seeing on that site is not actually what happened. It is fake in that sense.

“The way they managed to secure the video call was by impersonating somebody who works for the African Union. 

At the outset of the call, because they used the image of the person and their voice, we believed it was genuine, but it quickly became very obvious that there was something afoot.

“As you probably know from it, I ended the call.”

Mr Kuznetsov and Mr Stolyarov, known as Vovan and Lexus, brought up topics such as the invasion of Ukraine, Irish unification, and neutrality.

Mr Varadkar said Ireland did not intend to change its policy of neutrality and that there are no plans to join Nato.

However, he said the State has faced issues with Russian diplomats engaging in “unwelcome activities”, meaning there needs to be closer co-operation with the EU.

“We’ve had problems with Russian diplomats engaging in unwelcome activities, so we have to co-operate more with the European Union and we’re part of the Nato Partnership for Peace, but we’re not planning on joining Nato or becoming members of Nato.”

Mr Varadkar ended the video call with the pranksters after around 15 minutes, saying he had to “play along” for some time before doing so.

“What we did, immediately, was inform the African Union, the embassy in Addis Ababa through which it was organised, and other governments that this was being done, and as a result of that, we have to now change our procedures and we have changed our procedures in relation to video calls.

It is the new world of artificial intelligence. 

"It is actually really easy now to produce a fake image of somebody on a screen and that fake image can have the person’s voice and mannerisms.

“We’ll have to have very strict security protocols around this in the future, which we do, but I do think, in general, because of the advancements in technology, a lot more important things are going to have to happen in person than we might have thought during the pandemic that we’re going to move to a virtual world.”