Twitter removes Russian Embassy's tweet accusing pregnant bombing victim of being a crisis actor

A cluster of Russian Embassy Twitter accounts are sowing misinformation as the country’s bloody invasion of neighboring Ukraine escalates, but they might not get away with it for long. On Thursday, Twitter took action against one particularly egregious tweet claiming that a pregnant victim fleeing the site of a hospital bombing in Mariupol was an actor in “some very realistic makeup.” The account belongs to the Russian Embassy in London, which has been actively disseminating false information about ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine. Responding to a photo of a pregnant woman in the aftermath of the attack, @RussianEmbassy tweeted “… She has some very realistic make-up. She is also doing well with her beauty blogs. Plus she could not be in the maternity house at the time of the strike, as it has long been taken by the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who told all the staff to clear the place.” The false claims appear to have originated in Russian-language Telegram channels, which accused a Ukrainian blogger present at the hospital of playing the part of two different pregnant women at the scene of the bombing. Russia continues to deny and distort its military aggression in Ukraine, often with lies that…
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