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A pregnant woman who was badly injured in a attack by Russian forces on a hospital finally gave birth. Photos of Mariana Vishegirskaya with her her face bloodied was widely shared amid outrage at the attack, which killed three people.
Her niece in Turkey told local media that she gave birth the next day.
The infant was named Veronika, according to Ukraine’s UN representative.
Sergiy Kyslytsya, who spoke at the United Nations while holding a photo of Ms Vishegirskaya and her newborn daughter, slammed “Russian lies” about her in the aftermath of the incident.
Following the blast, Ms Vishegirskaya became the target of a Russian disinformation effort.
The Russian embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted a conspiracy theory that Ms Vishegirskaya was an actor and the attack was staged.
The BBC’s disinformation squad, on the other hand, discovered evidence that refuted the false accusations, including that she had purported to be many ladies taken at the scene.
Twitter eventually removed the posts from the Russian embassy, citing policies “connected to the denial of violent events.”
According to online rumours, Ms Vishegirskaya was not even expecting a child. The beauty blogger, on the other hand, told her fans she was expecting in January, weeks before the invasion, and later asked if they thought she’d have a girl or a boy.
On Friday afternoon, Mr Kyslytsya showed the photo of Ms Vishegirskaya to the assembled crowd, saying he wished to deliver “extremely excellent news.”
“Last night, Miss Mariana, the expecting woman, gave birth to a healthy daughter. Veronika is her name. She’s with her father in this photo. Whatever the Russians’ lies about her, her family, and the incident are, “he stated
He also claimed that Russia had killed more than 1,500 residents in Mariupol, which had been without water or electricity for days after being surrounded by Russian soldiers and had failed to build evacuation corridors. According to Ukraine, three people were killed in the hospital strike alone, including a kid.
“People are being buried in mass graves in Ukrainian cities for the first time since World War Two,” Mr Kyslytsya said.
In an effort to combat disinformation, a number of internet companies have began censoring Russian state media stations.
YouTube, the latest digital company to restrict channels affiliated with Russian state-funded media, did so on Friday. “Content denying, minimising, or trivialising well-documented violent occurrences” is prohibited, according to the video streaming service.