“Several European mayors have been contacted by a fake Kiev mayor who said absurd things.” It was Vitaly Klitschko himself, the first citizen of Kiev, who warned of the deception. And it was the mayors of Berlin, Madrid and Vienna who confirmed that they had received video calls from someone who pretended to be Klitschko. The office of the mayor of Berlin Franziska Giffey said he interrupted a phone call with the alleged mayor of Kiev after her comments and questions made the first citizen suspicious. Klitschko accused the Russians who invaded his country of practicing war on all fronts, “including that of spreading disinformation to put Ukrainian politicians in a bad light, turning them against their Western partners in order to stop aid from the country. West to Ukraine “.
The incriminated false conversations are the result of ‘deepfake’ technology, which through artificial intelligence makes it possible to replace people’s faces, expressions and voices with synthetic images, computer generated and modulated masks. The deceived European mayors, including the Madrid alcalde, José Luis Martinez-Almeida and Berlin-based Buergmeisterin Franziska Giffey, denounced the decoy was an invitation to a videoconference with Klitschko via a fake email address. “As our friends react quickly and support us, the mayors of Berlin and Madrid have agreed to talk to us. And with the help of Deepfake technology, the culprit talked to them pretending to be me,” the mayor of Kiev said in his statement on Telegram taken up by Ukrinform.
But the deception did not last long, at least in the case of Berlin: “There were no signs that the videoconference was not held with a real person,” said – quoted by the Guardian – Giffey, who held his videoconference on the Webex platform with a person who “had Klitschko’s face and voice”. But after about fifteen minutes the first suspicions surfaced, when the fake Klitschko started pointing the finger at Ukrainian war refugees who would cheat with the good faith of the Germans by unduly taking advantage of their social services, while they should be sent back to Ukraine at fight.
Taking advantage of a brief interruption in communication, the mayor contacted the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, who heard the Kiev authorities, confirming that there is no negotiation of the real mayor of the Ukrainian capital, according to the Spiegel reconstruction. Ukrainian anti-cyber services warn of possible new cases of online phishing, often carried by real Ukrainian sites but hacked without their knowledge and compromise.