Twitter removes Russian embassy tweet about pregnant Ukraine woman at hospital airstrike

The Russian Embassy in London alleged without evidence that a Ukrainian woman injured in a Russian airstrike in the city of Mariupol was playing "roles" after she was seen leaving a maternity hospital with injuries on her face. 

Wednesday, a Russian airstrike that hit a maternity hospital killed at least three people, including a child, and left 17 wounded. After the attack, the embassy tweeted that the facility was “long non-operational" and being used by “armed forces and radicals," according tomultiple reports. 

The embassy also tweeted a photo of Marianna Podgurskaya, a Ukrainian beauty blogger, who the embassy claimed “played roles” of multiple pregnant women during the attack, according to an image of the tweet from The Guardian. 

Twitter has since removed multiple tweets from the embassy, including a tweet accusing Podgurskaya, for violating the social media's platform's Abusive Behavior policy, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to USA TODAY.

The platform's abusive behavior policy prohibits "content that denies that mass murder or other mass casualty events took place," among other guidelines. 

USA TODAY has reached out to Podgurskaya.  

Friday, Olga Tokariuk, a journalist and disinformation researcher, tweeted that she had been in touch with a relative of Podgurskaya's, who told her she gave birth to a baby girl.

“They are ok, but it's very cold in Mariupol and the bombing doesn't stop,” Tokariuk wrote.  

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy had called the hospital strike an “atrocity," tweeting, "People, children are under the wreckage."

The United States on Friday is set to ramp up economic blows against Russia, including moving forward on revoking the country’s permanent normal trade relations status, which would allow new tariffs on Russian goods.