Vovan and Lexus

Background

Vovan

Vovan came to public attention in late 2011, when after that year's controversial parliamentary elections in Russia, he telephoned the chairman of Russia's Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov, introducing himself as Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and almost convinced Churov that President Dmitry Medvedev intended to fire him. In June 2012, he phoned Vitaly Mutko, the Russian Minister of Sports, and persuaded him to apologise for the drunken behaviour of athletes.

Comedy duo formation

In 2014, Vovan and Lexus began to work together. They telephoned President of Moldova Nicolae Timofti, posing as Georgian politician Mikheil Saakashvili, and spoke with General Kevin McNeely in the United States, to whom Vovan introduced himself as the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov. McNeely disclosed to the pranksters information about the supply of U.S. military aid to Ukraine during the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.

Elton John prank

In September 2015, Vovan and Lexus played a telephone prank on the British musician Elton John; Vovan impersonated Russian president Vladimir Putin and Lexus pretended to be his translator. They claimed to be discussing the rights of gay people in Russia. Erroneously believing the call to be genuine, John, on Instagram, made a post congratulating Putin for having contacted John to discuss the issue. Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov denied the conversation took place, and Putin telephoned Elton John apologising for the prank and describing the pranksters as "harmless".

Other prominent individuals

By 2015, Vovan and Lexus had pranked many prominent people, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. statesman John McCain, Soviet dissident Valeriya Novodvorskaya, Russian politician Vladimir Medinsky, Ukrainian politician Vitali Klitschko, viral Russian politician Natalia Poklonskaya, Russian ballerina Anastasia Volochkova, Russian actor Aleksei Panin, and Russian politician Vitaly Milonov.

In February 2016, Vovan and Lexus pranked President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; they introduced themselves as Ukrainian politicians Petro Poroshenko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Since April 2016, Vovan was co-host of weekly television prank show Zvonok ("[the] Call") on the Russian channel NTV. He co-presented the show with Lexus and Mikhail Gendelev. In July 2019, Vovan and Lexus called President of North Macedonia Zoran Zaev and they introduced themselves as Poroshenko.

In early 2018, they pranked U.S. Representative Adam Schiff. Posing as the head of the Ukrainian parliament Andriy Parubiy, they said he had compromising nude photographs of U.S. President Donald Trump after a claim Trump visited Moscow in November 2013 and was provided an escort with Russian singer and model Olga Buzova at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Vovan and Lexus also said Buzova met with Trump in New York sometime later, where a supposed affair took place. Afterwards, Schiff was convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin was made aware of the photographs by the duo, who said Ksenia Sobchak provided Buzova with an escort to Trump and that Sobchak was Putin's god-daughter, that Vovan and Lexus had secretly visited Ukraine, and that the Ukrainian government had access to the materials. The duo said Putin had a mediator, Russian singer Arkady Ukupnik, who met ex-advisor of President Trump Michael Flynn on Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and used a secret password, "Weather is good on Deribasovskaya" – the name of a Russian-American film – and that Ukupnik told Flynn the compromising photographs would not be released if Trump would cancel all sanctions against Russia.

In 2019, during the Venezuelan presidential crisis, they pranked Speaker of the National Assembly of Venezuela Juan Guaidó, and self-proclaimed interim president of the country, introducing themselves as Ueli Maurer, President of the Swiss Confederation. They told Guaidó that Nicolás Maduro had accounts in a fictitious Swiss bank and asked him to provide Swiss authorities with a legal request to freeze Maduro's assets. Vovan and Lexus also called U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams, who dismissed the possibility of military action by the U.S. in the country during the call.

Controversies

In December 2023, Vovan and Lexus called Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov, pretending to be representatives of the Ukrainian Government, and released the recordings of Akunin and Bykov expressing their support for Ukraine. The response in Russia was negative: many Russian publishing booksellers, including publishing company AST, ceased publication and distribution of Akunin's and Bykov's works. One of the few booksellers that continued to distribute Akunin's books, Zakharov Books, came under investigation by the Investigative Committee of Russia. Russian politician Andrey Gurulyov (United Russia) called Akunin an "enemy" that "must be destroyed".

Meduza said of Vovan and Lexus; "for some reason, their spoofs always seem to serve the interests of Russia's authorities". Vovan and Lexus told the website they would never play pranks on Putin allies such as head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov or Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill.

As many of the people they prank are those critical of the Russian government or Russian foreign policy, particularly non-Russians, critics say that Kuznetsov and Stolyarov work for the Russian authorities or Russia's security service (the FSB), or are otherwise involved in the Kremlin's foreign political interference programmes. The British government has repeated this claim. The duo deny being state actors, and Vovan has stated that he is free as to whom he pranks and does not work for hire, but that friends sometimes suggest who they prank next. After the prank on Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, Vovan said "For the mass media it is much more advantageous to say that the head of state was fooled not by two simple people, but that it was a very difficult intelligence operation in which a lot of money, time and resources were invested".

In Russia, some have called Vovan's pranks "telephone hooliganism". After participating with them in a program on state television channel Zvezda, Russian journalist and television presenter Mikhail Kozhukhov called the duo "a disgrace to the profession to which I belong".

YouTube ban and migration to Rutube

In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, clipped footage of British defence secretary Ben Wallace in a prank call by Vovan and Lexus was released online. Vovan and Lexus impersonated Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal, saying Ukraine wished to promote its own nuclear deterrent to protect itself from Russia, a claim previously made by the Russian government. Vovan and Lexus also called British home secretary Priti Patel. After this prank, on 26 March 2022, YouTube banned Vovan and Lexus, and on 22 March that year, the British Ministry of Defence had called for YouTube to remove all videos of calls by Vovan and Lexus. Following the ban, the two prankers opened up the channel on Rutube and continued publishing new content.