This week, Russian prank callers, Vovan and Lexus, released secretly recorded audio of two conversations they had with Prince Harry while they posed as climate activist Greta Thunberg and her father, Svante.
Though no official confirmation that it’s the prince has come from either the Sussex household or Buckingham Palace, not only does the voice on the tape sound an awful lot like Mr. Meghan Markle, but ET Canada is reporting they’ve received confirmation of the prankee’s identity.
Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov specialize in trying to catch people off guard and off brand. As such, their targets are usually politicians (Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters and Lindsey Graham have all been duped), but they do sometimes veer into the world of celebrity. (In 2015, the duo called Elton John, posing as Vladimir Putin.) With that in mind, it was probably only a matter of time before a royal was on the receiving end of one of these calls.
Listening to the content of the just-released audio, and assuming we’ve IDed the prince correctly, it’s difficult to imagine Harry regretting anything he says. For a start, the comments he makes about his and Meghan Markle’s decision to step away from their roles as senior royals are nothing but endearing.
“I can assure you, marrying a prince or princess is not all it’s made out to be… This decision certainly wasn’t the easy one but it was the right decision for our family, the right decision to be able to protect my son. And I think there’s a hell of a lot of people around the world that can identify and respect us for putting our family first.”
In addition, when he does get onto the subject of climate change, Harry speaks authoritatively and passionately, coming across as a profoundly empathetic person who is desperate to see policy change enacted to protect future generations.
“It’s not an easy time, and the world is in a troubled place, and unfortunately the world is being led by some very sick people who stop any change from happening, whether that’s because of their own bias [or] whether that’s because of the fact that it will change how they are able to behave themselves… We have to almost physically shake these people to get them to realize that not only are they stealing from your future… but also that they are directly responsible for actually killing people and wiping out whole communities.”
