{"id":378332,"date":"2024-03-21T19:55:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T20:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=378332"},"modified":"2024-03-22T00:04:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T00:04:00","slug":"olympic-chief-allegedly-targeted-by-russian-prank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=378332","title":{"rendered":"Olympic chief allegedly targeted by Russian prank"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Olympic Committee<\/a> believes its president Thomas Bach fell prey to a prank telephone call amid rising tensions with Russia over restrictions on its athletes competing at Paris 2024.<\/p>\n

The IOC on Friday detailed a call from people claiming to be from the African Union \u2014 a similar trick to one played by Russian callers on Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in September.<\/p>\n

In Meloni\u2019s call, she acknowledged \u201cfatigue\u201d with the war in Ukraine believing she was talking with officials of the African Union.<\/p>\n

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The IOC said it had calls with \u201ca person pretending to be the chair of the African Union Commission\u201d wanting to discuss a statement on the politicization of sport.<\/p>\n

\"International<\/p>\n

The IOC and Bach have publicly criticised the Russian state including over plans to organise an international multi-sports event in September, weeks after the Olympics close.<\/p>\n

Russian athletes who pass vetting to compete in Paris also will not take part in the opening ceremony parade of boats on the River Seine, the IOC decided this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere appears to have been a new incident in the Russian disinformation and defamation campaign against the International Olympic Committee and its president,\u201d the Olympic body said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cFake calls purporting to be from the African Union Commission appear to have been made by the very same group that has already attacked a number of global political leaders and other high-ranking personalities in the same way."<\/p>\n

Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov, known as Vovan and Lexus, also tricked the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, in November 2022.<\/p>\n

Duda believed he was talking to France\u2019s president Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n

Russia is on track to have about 35 athletes qualify for Paris \u2014 about 10 per cent of its usual team for a Summer Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The International Olympic Committee believes its president Thomas Bach fell prey to a prank telephone call amid rising tensions with Russia over restrictions on its […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":338929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":378334,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378332\/revisions\/378334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/338929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}