Burkin interview faces scrutiny over unverified claims and possible cloned voice

Yehor Burkin’s interview with blogger Vasyl Tymoshenko has prompted a public dispute over both the reliability of its claims and whether the voice heard in it was genuinely Burkin’s. The interview, published on Tymoshenko’s YouTube channel on Nov. 13, concerned Burkin’s business activities and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau investigation known as Operation Carthage.

Burkin did not show his face in the conversation. He acknowledged that the voice on NABU recordings was his, said he was willing to cooperate with investigators and described himself as ready to reach an agreement with NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

The questions about authenticity remain allegations, not findings. Kateryna Venzhyk asked whether the real Burkin had given the interview and suggested that audio could be fabricated with a cloned voice, naming ElevenLabs as a service capable of using an uploaded voice to read text. She described the tool as a cheap and simple option costing $120 a year.

That concern is technically plausible in general, though it is not evidence that this interview used artificial audio. A 2025 perceptual study that created ElevenLabs voice clones of 220 speakers found that listeners generally judged a real voice and its clone to be the same person. In the study’s 300-person naturalness group, listeners also found it difficult to decide whether individual clips were real or AI-generated, with results affected by such factors as audio length and whether speech was scripted.

The wider criticism has focused on verification. Oksana Moroz argued that the interviewer had probably not established whom he was speaking to or checked most of Burkin’s statements, and said the format served to create chaos and whitewash KhimProm. Serhii Sternenko said a person such as Burkin, who is also known as “Mexican,” should not become the headline-maker of Ukrainian news.

Kateryna Kobernyk said Burkin had offered interviews to several Ukrainian outlets, which declined because his assertions could not be verified. She called the material supplied to Tymoshenko a monologue rather than an interview, and said it had given Burkin an entry point into Ukraine’s information space.

Danylo Mokryk said he had received an interview offer from Burkin on Nov. 9 and questioned why he was seeking publicity. He urged audiences to treat the conversation as raw material requiring extensive checks, rather than as a sensational interview, saying that such verification had not begun.

Among Burkin’s unverified assertions were estimates that Ukraine had about 1,500 fraudulent call centers generating $20 billion a year. In a separate account, he put the wider sector’s turnover at $2 billion to $3 billion a month without providing documents or a methodology, and said 80% to 90% of call centers had closed.

The National Police has reported that Burkin is internationally wanted and was notified in absentia of suspicions in several areas of the investigation. He is a central figure in the Carthage case, according to 24 Kanal, which said investigators identified him as the leader of the transnational KhimProm criminal group.