By EUvsDisinfo
Vladimir Kuznetsov, known as Vovan, and Alexei Stolyarov, who goes by Lexus, are known for pranking world leaders and celebrities. They have called many of them using fake aliases, often posing as Russian, Ukrainian, or Western politicians, publishing carefully selected excerpts on their social media accounts. Framed as comedy, their work is highly political, consistently reinforcing narratives favourable to Moscow.
A shift after Crimea: targeting Ukraine and its allies
Their early pranks targeted local celebrities, but after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, they shifted their focus to Ukraine, targeting multiple senior figures such as then-President Petro Poroshenko and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko. In 2015, they went international, duping Elton John into believing he had received a call from Vladimir Putin to discuss LGBT rights, and subsequently targeting numerous Western politicians and media figures.
In a 2016 BBC interview, they denied any links to special services, dismissing such claims as attempts by Russian opposition figures and Ukrainian officials to deflect blame, and insisting that responsibility lay with those who fell for the pranks. Yet, by this point, their consistent pattern of targeting the Kremlin’s opponents was already evident. The ‘pranks’ have been repeatedly shared by multiple outlets, websites, and social media channels linked to Russian FIMI.
Discrediting post‑Soviet opposition movements
Since then, Kuznetsov and Stolyarov have sought to discredit post-Soviet opposition movements, reinforcing the claim that they are controlled by the West. During the protests in Belarus in 2020, they impersonated the Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tikhanovskaya in a call to the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), tricking its officials into talking of their contribution to the protests. Selectively extracted comments about protests and Western support in a prank targeting Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili in 2025 were used on social media to portray civic protests in Georgia as an externally orchestrated ‘colour revolution’ dependent on foreign backing.
Targeting Europe
European officials and politicians have likewise been frequent targets, in service of advancing other pro-Kremlin narratives. In a 2023 series of pranks involving Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, and other leaders, they posed as Volodymyr Zelenskyy and published selectively edited excerpts framed as revealing ‘control’ motives. This reinforced pro-Kremlin portrayals of the EU as authoritarian and controlling, while echoing broader messaging about alleged Western hypocrisy and lack of freedom.
Their pranks have also been used to support claims of declining Western backing for Ukraine. For example, a conversation with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – in which she remarked that European leaders were ‘tired’ of the war and seeking a way out – was used to amplify the Russian narrative of growing ‘Ukraine fatigue’ in the West.
In March 2026, in their call to Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt, they pressed Motzfeldt on whether Russia and China posed a threat to Greenland. The call was later discussed by the notorious Russian FIMI network Pravda, reinforcing a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative that Russia is not a genuine threat to Europe, while simultaneously advancing the claim that European governments exaggerate security risks to justify increased military spending.
In the same month, Kuznetsov and Stolyarov targeted Iranian exile figure Reza Pahlavi, posing as advisers to Germany’s Chancellor Merz and claiming Berlin was prepared to join a military strike on Iran. The prank echoed Moscow’s alignment with Tehran and sought to discredit Pahlavi as actively coordinating with Western actors in support of military action against Iran. The use of a fake moustache and the assumed name ‘Adolf’ by Stolyarov in the video call portrayed Pahlavi as naïve and further amplified a persistent Kremlin narrative invoking Nazi Germany to frame contemporary European politics as aggressive and historically continuous with fascism.
Weaponised ‘comedy’ as a FIMI Instrument
Vovan and Lexus’s calls to international leaders are best understood as part of the Kremlin’s broader FIMI operations rather than independent ‘pranks’. Although they have framed their work as audience-driven, their output has consistently aligned with pro-Kremlin talking points and has been amplified by Russian propaganda outlets. Their role became formalised with a show on Kremlin-controlled NTV in 2016. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, they were picked up by the state-run Channel One. Beyond television, their Telegram channel, followed by more than 181,500 subscribers, raises funds for Russian frontline supplies. In 2024, they were awarded the State Order of Friendship for ‘special merits in strengthening peace, friendship, cooperation, and mutual understanding among peoples’.
Outlets that report on these pranks often refer to the duo as ‘Russian comedians’, but the joke is on anyone who perceives their pranks as harmless ‘comedy’. Each call, carefully crafted and selectively edited, promotes multiple pro-Kremlin narratives, from undermining pro-Western opposition movements to amplifying geopolitical messaging favourable to Moscow. Far from simple entertainment, Vovan and Lexus’s work functions as a deliberate instrument of state-aligned influence, illustrating how pranks can be weaponised in contemporary information operations.
By EUvsDisinfo
