Russian producer Iosif Prigozhin recorded a video message in which he stated that the leaked recording of his alleged telephone conversation with former senator Farkhad Akhmedov was a fake. According to him, ill-wishers forged his voice using neural networks. In a conversation with Podyom, Prigozhin stressed that he supports the Russian authorities, and the authors of the fake want to discredit Vladimir Putin's supporters:
“All this is very unpleasant, it is difficult to live with it. My position is simple, I have not changed it and I am not going to change it. To quarrel inside with each other the president's supporters is probably the main goal. There are a huge number of people who want to split the society, to minimize the number of the president's supporters."
Also, the producer does not exclude that he could be confused with his namesake Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of Wagner PMC. The "Putin's cook" himself also commented on the alleged leak. According to him, the original target could indeed be himself: “It is possible that those people who carried out this special operation and who posted this conversation could think that I am talking.” Yevgeny Prigozhin also stressed that he does not speak as aggressively as his alleged namesake, and called himself a "soft person."
The record in question was published by Ukrainian media on March 25. On it, the alleged Akhmedov and Prigozhin criticize the Russian authorities for half an hour. In particular, Prigogine says the following: “To be honest, of course, they are criminals, damn it, what other criminals. They lost to Kvartal-95, damn it. And the fact that they say that those are fighting against them, behold – they themselves gave a reason. He was driven into this x * ynyu … He drove himself into this! To be honest, I would fucking stop, get a Nobel Prize and go to hell."