And Finally Artist News

Russian TV presenters admit faking Putin’s call to Elton John

By | Published on Thursday 17 September 2015

Elton John

Russian TV presenters Vladimir Krasnov and Alexei Stolyarov – aka Vovan and Lexus – have admitted that they were behind the call Elton John received which the singer believed to have been from the country’s president Vladimir Putin.

As previously reported, John recently called on Putin to meet with him, after speaking with Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko on LGBT rights in his country. The musician then posted on Instagram thanking the Russian president for calling him on the phone to discuss his country’s stance on gay rights and to arrange a meeting to speak further. A spokesperson for Putin quickly denied that any such call had been made.

Vova and Lexus claimed responsibility yesterday, releasing a recording of the conversation last night. Although described as a ‘prank’, it’s hard to see what the actual joke is. The duo said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda that it seemed John was “waiting for that call, so immediately believed in the reality”, but beyond the unlikeliness of the call in the first place, the duo don’t really push John to realise that the conversation is fake.

“Tell him he’s made my day”, says John to the person he believed to be a translator at the end of the conversation. So I guess the ‘joke’ here is that a well-meaning man was disappointed and the Russian government still has no plans to improve its terrible human rights record. Ha ha ha?

Here’s the conversion in full:



READ MORE ABOUT: |