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Did pregnant blogger stage bloody pic at Mariupol hospital? Russian embassy claims it's 'FAKE'

The embassy said that photos of a pregnant woman, who it claimed is Ukrainian beauty blogger Marianna Podgurskaya, with blood on her face were staged

The Russian embassy has been criticized for accusing a Ukrainian beauty influencer of being a crisis actor at the horrifying maternity hospital attack that killed three people in Mariupol. The Kremlin’s embassy in London stamped 'FAKE' over tweeted photos of the devastating incident in Mariupol on Wednesday, March 9. It insisted that the hospital only housed neo-Nazi radicals.

The embassy said that photos from the hospital scene of a heavily pregnant woman, who is being identified as Ukrainian beauty blogger Marianna Podgurskaya, with blood on her face were staged and that the blood was just “some very realistic make-up", the Times of London said. “It’s the indeed pregnant [Ukraine] beauty blogger Marianna Podgurskaya,” the embassy claimed.

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“She actually played roles of both pregnant women in the photos. And first photos were actually taken by famous propagandist photographer Evgeniy Malolekta, rather than rescuers and witnesses as one would expect," the Embassy added. Podgurskaya has not yet confirmed whether they were indeed her images. However, on February 28, she posted a picture of herself on her Instagram feed, where she is visibly heavily pregnant.

The tweet, however, was taken down following outrage from members of the British government. "This is fake news,"  tweeted UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries. spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the Guardian, “It is clear that this is further disinformation.” “You have seen the pictures of the people who were wounded during that attack, and you have seen what the prime minister said in his tweet,” the spokesman said, pointing at Johnson's statement that said "there are few things more depraved than targeting the vulnerable and defenseless.”

Russia sank to a new low after it bombed a maternity and children's hospital in the city of Mariupol as part of an airstrike. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack a war crime and said that a number of people were trapped under the wreckage. A regional official told Ukrainian media that at least 17 people, including staff and patients, were injured. 

Zelenskyy posted a footage of the wreckage caused by the strike. "Mariupol. Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity," he captioned the video. 

Just hours before the hospital was attacked, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said that as many as 3,000 babies were surviving without food or medicines. He said that a humanitarian corridor is needed for them to be able to flee. Although Moscow had promised a ceasefire in the city so that civilians could be safely evacuated, it failed to keep its word. 

NATO has claimed that Moscow could possibly be targeting civilians trying to flee Ukraine as part of Putin's reign of terror. On Tuesday, March 8, a convoy of buses packed with people fleeing the war was struck, with 21 people, including two children, losing their lives, Ukrainian authorities said. Thousands of people, including civilians and soldiers, are thought to have been killed.