Sir Elton John is no longer feeling the love, after pranksters admitted tricking him into believing he got a call from Vladimir Putin.

On Wednesday, Russian comedians Vladimir “Vovan” Krasnov and Alexei “Lexus” Stolyarov owned up to prank calling John earlier this week and pretending to be the Russian president.

The call made headlines around the world after John publicly thanked Putin for speaking with him in an Instagram post Tuesday morning, only to have the Kremlin deny any such conversation took place hours later.

The Russian duo decided to call John following an interview the musician did with the BBC last week. In it, he criticized Putin for advocating “isolating and prejudiced” policies against gay people, and said he’d like to speak with the Russian president, though dismissed the likelihood of such a conversation happening as “pie in the sky.”

So when the phone rang, with Putin apparently on the other end, John couldn’t pass on the opportunity.

“Strange as it might seem, he didn’t seem at all surprised. There was no surprise at all. He was just very excited,” Krasnov told ABC News. “He said how wonderful it was that I had called.”

Krasnov said John didn’t broach the subject of gay rights in the call, but did bring up the situation in Ukraine and push for a meeting in person.

“Alexei has excellent English so he played [presidential press secretary] Dmitry Peskov and translated our conversation. And I was Vladimir Putin,” Vovan told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, as translated to English by the BBC.

The Kremlin said Putin would take the call should the singer decide to give him a ring, and has called upon the pranksters to apologize. Then again, sorry seems to be the hardest word.

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