As the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine spreads the fog of war across Eastern Europe, the British government has opened an official inquiry into a new front in the battle for information superiority: Who’s been prank calling government ministers, and could they please leave them alone?
In the past week, both U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel said they’d received calls from people claiming to be high-ranking Ukrainian officials. In Wallace’s case, the caller said he was Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, and Wallace said he grew suspicious and hung up after the caller “posed several misleading questions.” (I can only assume it was stuff like “do you have Prince Albert in a can?” and “is your refrigerator running?” among other mainstays of the prank call genre.)
