An unknown individual fooled members of the Danish parliament’s Foreign Policy Board by posing as Belorussian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya during a classified remote meeting.
The board, which is the highest ranking committee on foreign affairs in Denmark’s parliament, was scheduled to hold a video conference with Tsikhanouskaya to discuss the current situation in Belarus. As the talks got underway, the impostor said technical issues made it impossible to turn on her camera.
Members of the board were 40 minutes into the meeting when they started to get suspicious and cut the call short.
“I’m of course worried that the participation in the meeting has been misused,” Martin Lidegaard, a former Foreign Affairs Minister and the current chairman of the board, said in a statement.
Lidegaard later told Danish broadcaster TV2 that web traffic traced the call back to Russia, and that members of the board realised they were dealing with an impostor when she asked about animal brothels, a favourite Russian conspiracy about Denmark.
The boards meetings are normally classified and are at times attended by the Prime Minister. However, the board said no state secrets were revealed and that the incident is under investigation.