Internet prankster "protects" Belarusian president from Medvedev

A Russian lawmaker was forced to apologize to Dmitry Medvedev on Friday for a comment posted on the president’s Twitter page by a person posing as the deputy.

The Russian president had earlier “tweeted” about his uneasy relations with the Belarusian president. A user named “@AKhinstein” commented on Medvedev’s tweet and criticized the leader’s views. Medvedev was led to believe that the user was in fact Russian deputy Aleksandr Khinstein, and “re-tweeted” on the comment by saying Lukashenko “doesn’t need to be defended by deputies from other countries. I will deal with him myself”.The Russian president was unaware that Khinstein has a different Twitter account. As soon as the real lawmaker learned about the stunt, he apologized to Medvedev. Khinstein says he has already asked Twitter’s administrators to deal with the fake account. He has also advised the anonymous prankster to pose as “someone like Angelina Jolie” instead.