An outcry has erupted after a Russian embassy accused a Ukrainian beauty influencer of being a crisis actor in the deadly maternity hospital blast that killed three people, including a baby girl.
The Kremlin’s London embassy first slapped a big “FAKE” over photographs of Wednesday’s massacre in Mariupol, claiming the hospital exclusively housed neo-Nazi fanatics.
The embassy said it was merely “some extremely realistic make-up” when observers referred to photographs of a very pregnant woman fleeing with blood streaming from her face, according to the Times of London.
“It’s Marianna Podgurskaya, a pregnant [Ukraine] beauty blogger,” the embassy claimed.
“She appeared in the images as both a pregnant woman and a non-pregnant woman.”
The only attempt at proof was a claim that the images were taken by a “famous propagandist photographer” — naming an award-winning war photographer covering the invasion for the Associated Press.
The same journalist had obtained horrifying photographs of people being buried in a mass grave in the city before the hospital attack, which the Red Cross described as “apocalyptic.”
While Podgurskaya’s identity as the injured woman in the hospital photos has yet to be established, she is based in Mariupol and recently uploaded an Instagram photo of her massively pregnant tummy.
Despite this, the embassy said that “she could not have been in the maternity house during the strike since it has long been taken over by the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, who told all the employees to clear the area.”
According to the UK Times, Twitter eventually withdrew the messages after criticism from the highest levels of the British government.
“This is bogus news,” UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries tweeted, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman told the Guardian, “It is evident that this is additional deception.”
“You’ve seen the photographs of the people who were injured in that incident, and you’ve seen what the prime minister stated in his tweet,” the spokesman said, alluding to Johnson’s statement that “targeting the innocent and defenseless” is “as deprave as it gets.”
While the embassy’s tweets were taken down, its Facebook page still featured a retweeted video from the Russian Mission in Geneva, which claimed the gruesome hospital attack was “false news.”
A small child was one of three individuals killed in the incident, which also injured 17 others, according to Ukrainian officials.
The attack, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was a “atrocity” and “genocide” that targeted “children, women, and medical staff.”
Vice President Kamala Harris could not hide her displeasure as she blasted Russia’s “unimaginable proportions” of atrocities, adding “absolutely” a war crimes probe should be launched.