Russia has been slammed for peddling 'fake news' after claiming a pregnant survivor of the Mariupol hospital bombing was a beauty blogger in makeup as the Kremlin desperately attempts to deny attacking mothers and their babies.
Nadine Dorries, the UK culture secretary, denounced a tweet by Russia's London embassy which identified a bloodied patient seen evacuating from Mariupol maternity hospital on Wednesday evening as 'Marianna' - a beauty blogger from the city.
The tweet - which has since been deleted for violating Twitter's 'community guidelines' - claimed the blogger 'played' the roles of two victims in photos it said were taken by a 'propagandist', who is actually a photographer for respected news wire Associated Press.
It comes after Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, told a news conference earlier in the day that the hospital was a 'legitimate target' because there were no patients in it at the time of the attack and it had been overtaken by 'extremists' from the Azov Brigade which is defending the city.
Images and video from the scene clearly show several pregnant women taken out of the badly damaged hospital with injuries. Ukraine said three people died in the attack, including a six-year-old girl, while 17 others including hospital staff were wounded.
At the same press conference, Lavrov claimed that Russia 'never attacked Ukraine' and denounced international outcry over the hospital attack as 'pathetic'. President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the...
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