Russia was behind hoax calls made to three high-profile cabinet ministers, Downing Street has revealed.
Number 10 blamed Kremlin “disinformation” for Ben Wallace, Priti Patel and Nadine Dorries being targeted.
Defence secretary Wallace blew the whistle last week after he spent eight or nine minutes on a Microsoft Teams call with someone claiming to be Ukraine’s prime minister Denys Shmyhal.
Wallace tweeted: “He posed several misleading questions and after becoming suspicious I terminated the call.
“No amount of Russian disinformation, distortion and dirty tricks can distract from Russia’s human rights abuses and illegal invasion of Ukraine. A desperate attempt.
It later emerged that Patel, the home secretary, and culture secretary Dorries had also been targeted.
At a briefing for journalists this morning, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “The Russian state was responsible for the hoax telephone calls made to UK ministers last week.”
The spokesman said “disinformation is a tactic straight from the Kremlin playbook” and said doctored versions of the conversations could be released by Russia to justify their actions in Ukraine.
He added: “We know this is something that the Russian state tries repeatedly.
“It won’t be the last attempt, for sure. We do have strong protections in place against this sort of thing and we will call it out when we see it.”