"It's Make-Up": UK's Russian Embassy Reacts To Photos Of Injured Woman In Bombed Hospital

Social media giant Twitter has deleted a series of tweets by the Russian Embassy in the UK for violating its policies after claiming that the photos of an injured pregnant woman who was seen being evacuated from a bombed maternity hospital in the besieged port city of Mariupol as 'staged'.

In a series of tweets, the Russian Embassy in the UK had claimed that the pregnant woman seen in a photo was actually a Ukraine ¡°beauty blogger¡± and suggested that the photo was staged propaganda.

AP

What the Russian embassy claimed

The Russian Embassy had initially claimed that the bombed hospital was non-operational and no civilians were injured.

Later it posted the photo of the pregnant woman and a photo of Marianna Podgurskaya from her Instagram account to suggest that she was an actress.

According to the Embassy, she wore ¡°very realistic make-up¡± to embellish head wounds and ¡°played roles of both pregnant women on the photos.¡±

On her Instagram account, there are several photos of Podgurskaya, suggesting that is was in fact, pregnant.

It wasn't just the Embassy in the UK that tried to discredit the photos.

AP

Kremlin spokesperson Dmittry Peskov told Reuters Thursday "Russian forces do not fire on civilian targets,¡± and he didn¡¯t have ¡°clear information¡± on the hospital strike.

Shortly after, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called claims of the attack ¡°pathetic,¡± claiming there were no civilian victims because the hospital "long ago became a base for extremists."

According to Ukrainian authorities, 17 people were injured and three, including a child and two adults, were killed, in the attack on the hospital.

AP

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Mariupol strike trapped children and others under the rubble.

"A children's hospital. A maternity hospital. How did they threaten the Russian Federation?'' Zelenskyy asked in his nightly video address, switching to Russian to express his horror at the airstrike. "What kind of country is this, the Russian Federation, which is afraid of hospitals, afraid of maternity hospitals, and destroys them?''

The World Health Organization said it has confirmed 18 attacks on health facilities and ambulances since the fighting began, killing 10 people. It was not clear if that number included the assault on the maternity hospital.

AP

French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack ¡°a shameful and immoral act of war.¡± Britain's Armed Forces minister, James Heappey, said that whether the hospital was hit by indiscriminate fire or deliberately targeted, ¡°it is a war crime.¡±

US Vice President Kamala Harris, on a visit to Ukraine's neighbor Poland, backed calls for an international war-crimes investigation into the invasion, saying, ¡°The eyes of the world are on this war and what Russia has done in terms of this aggression and these atrocities.¡±

For more on news, sports and current affairs from around the world, please visit Indiatimes News.