one welcome to all the part judging from opinion polls around the world many people view this as an pollsters aiming for holier than though image in public and living as if rules don't apply to down in cavite such hypocrisy may be absenting but doesn't justify a little bit of lying to be revealed but to discuss that i'm now joined by alex they still are off and i'm glad you know because it's all better known as russian pranksters lexus and van ness it's good to talk to you thank you very much for your time and willingness to talk to us thanks for your time i really like the design of your t. shirt things how do you respond to the question posed here. my answer is. i can't answer because if i will say that. nobody will believe me i will

see that they were there so i will see not true so it's a bit of prying this time when they are yeah it's like a kind of trolling ok for your for your. viewers well the most high profile and the latest trolling that he engaged in lately was on president french president the man elmer on who actually called the all number thinking that he had reached the new president elect like him is the lansky how did it happen did you just call human live in the masses how did you know who to call. long ago maybe you were on to two years. we didn't have a strong reason to reach where we so on news of the president meeting with mr selenski we decide it's a great reason to call him and we tried to reach him for diplomatically. and we'll

left our number as a number of mr the landscape and so we received a phone call from his administration and they asked so would you if president mark wrong will congratulate you on the next sunday so we were prepared when me and i pledged to marry soon president drawn has his own security service and probably some kind of secure communication channels publicly believe you just like that i am guessing you used or maybe they were supposed to use special technology and would track the source of the phone call. now. yes of course he has a security service but mr zillion ski is not the president of ukraine yet so he doesn't have access to the presidential communication lines. he can't use the ukrainian embassy in paris to set up an official phone call with another head of state but again as always so when zillion ski was invited to meet with president

mccrone in paris they contacted him through his campaign staff. the french could not have contacted the candidate through any official channels for answers but only three people in his campaign. we were able to keep ahead of the game going to night because they know it's not it's not the first ukrainian you're praying to you have played pranks on the current president before four times and probably would not have called from his personal cell phone in a little tumble and you know there were several different situations we've tried different kinds of communication with president bush. once he called us thinking that he was calling the president of kyrgyzstan we also used the same plane we used on president mccrone we left our phone number and when he was in his office surrounded by aides so he made a phone call using a special. secure line when he thought that he was calling another secure line not

a regular virtual phone number. also used a mobile phone we found out about it a year ago we also called him pretending to be the georgian leader i think we also wish him a happy new year but i really it was good them it was a great break we made an audio recording of jens stoltenberg statements he heard his words begin to express his excitement in english while but at the end of the co alexei killed his enthusiasm a little bit yes he sounded very disappointed. well i think maybe we were the only ones who called to wish him a happy new year that. now going back to that conversation with micron i thought he sounded pretty guarded that i mean the you managed to draw a couple of laughs and some interesting admissions from him but by and large he was

quite diplomatic do you think he suspected something fishy no i don't think that he expected something from our side i think that he's a from from conservative diplomatic school so he was pretty. polite and he he wanted to just just to congratulate not talk about anything else but it's we try to press him and ask more and more relations between our countries he wasn't prepare for such a conversation that's why he was a little bit quiets about that and he didn't answer a lot now i'm lucky if you like to focus on president poroshenko and bring up he's a legend problem with alcohol i personally don't think it's all that funny because i remember the shame i felt when the drunkard was the leader of our state i'm talking about president you. yes why do you bring up the subject so much don't you

feel sorry for the ukrainians. who tell you who bottom listen it's their choice so we don't interfere with their political life we don't tell them who they should vote for you they chose this man personally doesn't symbolize the whole country of ukraine so any head of state can be made fun of that's part of having democracy and civil society the president's looks or behavior inspire these jokes as well as they read them to go with us you know when you think you should get more and just want to shank looks funny and we often see this horrible wrinkled suits like he was drinking and then slept in that suit somewhere if you will use it even though we mostly focus on political aspects in our talks and we don't discuss subjects that are of no interest to us. keep it secure moon interest and i'm sure much we're still growing sisters therefore we tried to do something funny play

a joke to us is this odd bottles of alcohol in his pocket or part of his image. just because they're poor kind of moment but to us today it's why we always use this joke. the funny thing is is that when we told mr mccrone this joke. to die on the day used. to be some puns going i hope i will drink champagne but hopefully i will not get as drunk as brushing who usually does he laughed hardly yells at the door because alicia it seems like europe knows that the president of ukraine likes alcohol. just mentioned the big laugh that the huge are out of prison across an ad they mention of question as drinking habits but the french president was also. i think he made the quite unflattering comments about russia and the russian leader president putin he joked about him having locked up all his

political presidency that prime sounded perhaps more compromising of put in than of the how do you feel about it we don't care about his answer he said what he ford's in fact so yes he for things that russia is not democratic. it's his opinion but what is more the most important there is that he's read it to improve the relations between all the countries. for months and he's ready to change relations between our countries including new korean russia germany and france because we saw that he's tired of whole situation in don't boss and he should to fix mistakes of course. agreed that it wasn't right on when he was a president and his behavior was not correct now speaking by our president elect

selenski he looks like a person who would i think appreciate your sense of humor have you ever tried to get through to him well we. will try to reach him before when he was he was and candidates on the president elections and it was a few pranks with him one was from when we called him from. military service and come to army and the second was when we called him and. he didn't speak of the form but picked up before is that a prank or has it. and kill mostly was the nearest him and he picked on the phone and tried to. say that i will find you i will kill you and. it was later that the so called like a strike between between us and colon whiskey. is

victory is one big political crank for three years he played a president and now he suddenly becomes president we've got what we've been seeing since you love comedy what can you say about such a plot twist. well principle of the said well this is an interesting choice given that at the selection the ukrainians didn't really have a lot to choose from there's the elite that has been in power for several decades now. and those people who represent the done busts of the opposition such as. they took part in every election in ukraine. so what i think is that the ukrainians have grown tired of all the same faces especially so when nothing changed every time a different politician was elected the situation in the country remained unchanged

again and again and then the my done revolution happened in two thousand and fourteen and everyone had very high hopes people dreamed of joining europe and living a beautiful life five years have passed and now ukraine sees a civil war the economy situation is dire the dollar exchange rate has soared and that's why the people had no choice but to play the big political prank on the establishment. i wouldn't say it's so praying it's ukraine's last hope for change. now you have a very large collection of american francs prank the american officials and i think they're the funniest and also the most unsettling because they expose absolute ignorance that many american politicians have about their will despite the fact that they have a lot of influence. isn't it scary for you to live in this kind of wealth when people who know nothing about other countries still command a lot of power over the events and there's countries yes it's a i think it's

a drama for all walt because yes i know that they manage live so for the people who lived on the other side of world they have a big influence so we want to show their real face to. or other societies to show that they can live what their real really what what their education is what their. real opinion not do show opinion not like every politician has his own mosque so we want to show his real face what the minute presentation is in there let me ask you another question in the us a particular narrative that has been covering increasingly popular over i mean is that the democrats colluded with the ukrainian authorities in order to undermine you don't hold trumps reputation. and that the campaign itself said the other day

that he hoped that their tour in the general would look into these claims was is that you have a cute collection that may actually be a source for a great many interesting details regarding the issue. would you give your files to the u.s. justice department. but they all are publicly available we don't keep anything your secret do we upload all that we do. fake material fake materials to. console. to mr miller or really to you yes it was probably even through your conversation with adam schiff not not for the machine for his line from his business he would try to reach show offices of the special console miller and we were in touch with his team and we were already provided fake. fake documents them and they already have sort of maybe maybe it's a real reason why they started to investigate that collusion between ukraine and

democrats seriously you know that sometimes fiction. tells truth badder than yes yes they allege truth so i think as we say in russia in every job there is only a little a little bit of it yes that's true that's. we make it aware to a reality through our phone calls and conversation but it's usually we predict the future through our phone calls for example when we when we. save the life of the pilot. and then it happened exchanged between sergeant and other our soldiers were in ukraine and for example. try to repeat what we did what we have done so we can look at that and say you are the real power master says that yes it was great of the we tried to manage pull the politics. well guys for the time being let's take

a very short break but they will be back in just a few moments. after the previous stage of my career was over everyone wondered what i was going to do next. different clubs on one hand it is logical to signal from fields where everything is familiar on the other i wanted a new challenge and a fresh perspective i'm used to suppressing. one. i'm going to talk about football not the or else you can think i was going to do.

by the way ways of the slide here. welcome back to worlds apart with alexis the lead off and of lead the american it's all better known as russian black's us and van. we are now recording this conversation in you considered boric and when you leave. is joining us from a lot of what i see screeches twenty six hundred kilometers away walk me through the logistics of it how do you guys get together for your francs how does it happen so we don't have to be close to charles or to make our praying so we do it through internet so you see that's we have a good connections with skype now and we usually make a conference between each other and we call for a conference and we. that's moments we can we could be located. three thousand

miles from each other so it's it's. a challenge that you could be sitting in your bedroom or wearing a pajamas and calling well you know these are nice yes and with a cup of coffee for example the usual it's like in the morning you can go to the store buy a. coffee. or across sun come back to torment you see that you have a conversation with the secretary general of nato so you you can watch the t.v. shows and then when the. switch on your letter to the period of the discuss in on anything i would say has described the almost utilitarian conditions of your work i go at it again with have you ever tried to call president putin in the same condition. i am sure you can call putin in any conditions but he. actually took us two years to

get to mr mccraw and. we waited for a window of opportunity for two years and finally we got a chance to text him and give him some information it's always a very slim chance you can't be sure if they take the bait or not you know will we would be happy to get putin or trump on the phone i think ocean would be the pinnacle of your prankster career in terms of this insatiable isn't in the complexity of fulfilling the time if you ever get a chance to get in touch with putin how do you think you would set he not know almost some villain to do that we would need a telephone number to call any contact details not just the number of his administration and i think you need to pick a country first the president's press secretary mr peskov number is not hard to get to know no one calls his call for if they need to talk to the president doing so he

has international communications advisors who can organize a phone talk to me or you can approach the minister of foreign affairs not that good but you need to pick a country first to make up your mind on the leader of what country you're going to be. it must be someone who doesn't have close contact with mr putin already remember last year spring when we pretended to be armenia's pm and you call pushing this man had come out of nowhere he came to power as a result of a peaceful revolution and had an established contacts with other world leaders at that moment we didn't have an office and he could use to get in touch with them quickly if needed we used a story and called officials in europe dr john claude juncker. and boris johnson pretend to. be pushing. the same kind of story is needed for a break with putin or trump or any other world leader this is the way to go but

even this evening they're going to put on the religious the still ability gets to mention champ have you ever tried to get through to him. here's who try it for example and probably. would try to reach his of ministration. but we didn't find a person who would be best for that conversation because when we tried to reach him from ukrainian authorities his administration wouldn't talk to them because ukraine is knots i can't say that maybe ukraine is not so important for trumps of ministration so it's enough. for example ukrainian president is enough to talk to secretary of defense secretary of energy and energy. over the years or was enough to reach trying to rescue us so it's not enough so we need to find another another person if they could talk to him to see he said say that because i

don't know if you read the miller report. released recently but it actually mentions that put in ad the at one point when the allegations of collusion were at their highest complain to one of the russian bankers that he doesn't know whom to talk in the trunk administration so it seems like you guys who are in this similar situation. probably probably so we also. and so we also called two american politicians and for a way the fake documents and fake fake news spread like it's now it's more than two to show fake collusion between white house and the kremlin so and politicians are ready to believe so they believe firmly in their they want to believe not that it's not only in truth. in the miller report that was from the miller report it was

clear that this rarely around town for a lot of them pollsters and people of very very shady yesterday political swindlers . do. think of me the easier and perhaps more difficult to reach john because everybody in the west or many people in the west believe that the kremlin had a direct line to the charm but it seems like both of the best russian pranksters and the kremlin administration didn't know how to reach him. think it doesn't doesn't impact. on or reaching to trump so. i think its many of its many cheaters around trump ministration for example there was some praying with trump prank was charmers already have done buds by american citizens so it's year one radio host called him and when he was in his air force one so he called to speak on speech ward of white house and told

that he is a sin that's are and then the us. told them that he would like to urge a phone call with strom. workers and one white house reached. and told them told him that's of this is somebody in america i'm going to be to did you feel jealous no no i think because it was a. it's not it was not a good prank is about two minutes and the tram didn't answer or something interesting something special if we would be on the place and we or of course we would we be more perfect but it's like it's proof that it's possible to reach even trump or some other world leader with our. secret service is a meeting we're not sure where the you can see this or not but today aleksey is wearing do you work for the year you see shirts i guess you hear this question

quite a lot because your ability to build connections is head and shoulders above. of what an average journalist is able to achieve i think you must have certain friends with connections or at least friends with special equipment. unless you did for what we do we don't need any special equipment to get to talk to world leaders what we need is to find the approach that works best in each case. with them up but only in those that would you actually some people mistakenly believe that there are some underground or underwater telephone lines connecting world leaders which they used to talk to each other in this case. when you have with you so i know you all have their own secure lanes but when you

try to call somebody else you don't know what kind of equipment he's using at the moment. you need to know the right approach you need to have certain social engineering skills we have vast experience in this area we have been doing this for over ten years now we started to pull bring some world leaders around two thousand and fourteen we've been making progress like any other professionals were able to achieve more than those who have just started as a challenge why do you do what you do just for fun or maybe you see other value in pranking apart from entertainment. initially when we started we did this mainly for fun i'm not talking about breaking world leaders we started with brain king showbiz celebrities and freak personalities but after some time we got tired of it so when the ukraine crisis began we shifted to journalism

began to pull pranks to get the information we wanted. them to and we call what we do pray in journalism we don't just call someone to make fun of him or her but we're conducting an interview of a kind of course we are not doing this openly. as we also prepare for these interviews we prepare a set of basic questions we try to guess the answers we might get and try to set the direction of the conversation we choose a subject we're interested in and we choose a person we consider interesting we also want to unveil the mystery and show others what kind of people the world leaders actually are and what world politics really is. heard here joke that russia has to

real reliable allies they they had carious and the crankcase and i think you left out the trolls but even the hackers and the pranksters this is the kind of job that many people take a very very serious there specially in the west do you feel like what you do serves russia's interest russia's national interest so we're. we don't have any connections to government so we do our job by ourselves only with the help from any other side. including. secret services. for lease or diplomats all things that we have done or was done by our political view of course we dorn's want to harm anybody and we don't want to make or relations between countries worse and we're more that's. made.

of something consequence and so yes i know there. are. consequences and future but we of course think about it before we do our pranks and some think is the interests or fall countries suffering is not in the interest of our country but it's also popular not only in russia but in all our of the war ok well guys it's been a great pleasure talking to you thank you very much for its imus thank you so much for your time. to. encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and off to syria again same place same time here on worlds apart .

join me every thursday on the alex simon chill and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. i need you know one of the. on the what are. your total. money we didn't know. oh you ought to go to. see the

movie for your. empty chair greeted the house judiciary committee instead of the u.s. attorney general on the second hearing into his handling of the reports into alleged trumped russia collusion the session was labeled a circus with one democratic member of crime the shooting. chicken bar should have shown up today and answered questions you think yesterday prove you're not terrified is it before anybody still in the circus continues over the. world press freedom day the u.k. foreign secretary accuses this travel of being a weapon all this information and weighs in on who exactly he thinks should be trusted. out of all right socks of us in the bahamas raised the law as while swimming pigs become the latest or

a sensation only talking but i'll go with local businesses quick to.