The UK is running out of anti-tank weapons to send to Ukraine, the defence secretary appeared to tell Russian impostors posing as the Ukrainian prime minister, according to the latest video released by the pair.
Downing Street has said it believes Russian state actors were responsible for the hoax, in which an impersonator was put through for a video call with Ben Wallace about the situation in Ukraine.
Officials said they were prepared for more details from the call to be released in the coming days and that they anticipated this would be timed to cause maximum embarrassment to the British government, including at the Nato summit this week.
Wallace took the call from Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, who are known as Vovan and Lexus, believing it was Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian prime minister, but became suspicious midway through the call. The pair are suspected of links to Russia’s security services, although they have denied this.
The hoax callers also managed to get through to the home secretary, Priti Patel, and attempted to reach the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, who alerted the Foreign Office before the call request was accepted.
Cabinet ministers and senior officials have been warned to be on their guard for further attempts to embarrass them in the coming days and weeks.
Western officials believe Russia intends to step up tactics to divide the response of western allies to the invasion of Ukraine, including by embarrassment such as that caused by the hoax call to Wallace. They do not think the hoax was intended to be an intelligence-collecting technique, more a strategy of disruption.
In a clip posted to YouTube, Wallace looks bewildered as the hoaxer says the NLAWs (next generation light anti-tank weapons) that the UK has supplied to Ukraine have failed. Wallace said he was in touch daily with Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov.
“I don’t think ours have failed. I’ve got the details of ours. We’ve given you over 4,000. We’ve got more coming,” he said. “We’re running out of our own. I speak to Reznikov and text him every day.”
In an earlier clip released on Monday, Wallace appears to be asked if he would support Ukraine’s nuclear aims; Russia has falsely claimed Kyiv has nuclear ambitions.
A defence source said: “It’s a doctored clip. What you don’t hear is the defence secretary also saying that the UK can’t have anything to do with alleged Ukrainian nuclear ambitions, because the UK is committed to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.” However, the source did not dispute the substance of what Wallace appeared to have said.
UK officials view this week as a crucial moment for western unity in the face of escalating attacks by Russia on civilian populations.
Boris Johnson will attend the Nato summit in Brussels this week, along with the US president, Joe Biden, where he is expected to make the case for western allies to ramp up supplies of defensive weapons to Ukraine.
The prime minister will tell allies at the Nato summit that there is an immediate imperative to support the Ukrainians now, according to UK sources, and that the Russian tactics of indiscriminately firing on civilian centres is inherently escalatory.
