‘US spies hacked my Twitter to repost Obama messages’ – Russian UFC fighter Volkov (VIDEO)

Russian UFC star Alexander Volkov says nefarious “US spies” were behind the hack attack on his Twitter account last year, which was infiltrated and turned into a homage to former American President Barack Obama.

The bizarre series of events emerged toward the end of last year, when hackers accessed the Russian heavyweight’s account, adding a link to the obama.org website and then retweeting a series of posts from the 44th US president as well as his foundation.

It left fans puzzled as to whether the 6ft 7in Russian nicknamed 'Drago' had suddenly become a fervent supporter of the former Democrat leader.   

The last authentic post from Volkov was back in August, when he posted a mock-up poster ahead of his October fight in Las Vegas against Derrick ‘The Black Beast’ Lewis, which the Russian fighter would go on to lose via a stunning late KO.

While Volkov is not a man who pays too much attention to social media, he and his team did eventually rumble that the account had been hacked, taking action to remove the Obama-themed posts.

Volkov told RT Sport about the bizarre story in Moscow on Wednesday, where he was attending a press day for the upcoming UFC St. Petersburg event, which he will headline in a match-up against Dutch veteran Alistair Overeem.

“My Twitter was cruelly hacked by American spies, or someone like that,” said Volkov, who has around 4,500 followers on the platform and only issues posts every couple of months or so.        

“They even changed my email address, it took specialists about a week to fix it…

“I wanted to put a post of Putin afterwards, saying this is the right president, but I was too modest,” he joked.

“I pay less attention to Twitter than I do to other social media like Instagram [where he has 127,000 followers], but I think in the near future I’ll use it more, there will be more interesting news on Twitter as well, so follow my accounts,” he added. 

When asked how he would react if opponent Overeem took to social media to dish out any sorts of insults ahead of their fight, Volkov said it was unlikely he would let tensions spill outside the cage, as countryman Khabib Nurmagomedov did with his infamous cage jump at UFC 229.

“I don’t know what I would do, but it’s unlikely that after the fight I’d jump out of the octagon and attack [Overeem’s] team,” he joked.

Volkov, nicknamed ‘Drago’, takes on Overeem in St. Petersburg on April 20, at what will be the UFC’s second event in Russia.

The action will go down at the Yubileyny Sport Palace, with a crowd of up to 8,000 expected.

Volkov, 30, will be looking to bounce back from the defeat to Lewis, which came just 10 seconds from the end of a bout he had largely bossed until that on point.

It also ended the Russian’s four-fight winning streak since joining the UFC, and meant his overall record slipped to 30 wins and seven losses.