– I would not trust for a second what Russia now shares about and with Marianna, writes Vitalii Rybak in a message to Dagbladet.
He is the chief analyst at the organization Internews Ukraine, which, among other things, works to combat Russian disinformation.
In March, a hospital in the city of Mariupol in Ukraine, which, among other things, had a maternity ward, bombed. In retrospect, pictures of a highly pregnant woman who is being evacuated have traveled around the world.
Arouses attention: – Propaganda
La ut video
Several foreign media, including The Timeshas written that the pregnant woman is beauty blogger Marianna Vyshemirskaya.
On Friday, Vyshemirskaya posted a series of videos on her Instagram page, where she is being followed by almost 80,000 at the time of writing.
Here she denies, among other things, that the sewing house was hit by an air attack. Dagbladet was among the media that covered the statements on Vyshemirskaya’s Instagram page.
A video with similar content has been spread by a number of state-owned media in Russia – as well as the official Twitter account of Russia’s UN delegation.
Russian claim: – The peak of cynicism
– Spread in FSB channel
Dagbladet reported on Saturday that several western experts believe that the interview is an active propaganda move by Russia.
– Russia has already tried to prove that the attack on the maternity ward was “staged”, but independent fact-checkers quickly disproved the Russian allegations, Rybak says.
He refers, among other things, to a review from USA Today.
Both the Russian embassy in Britain and Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia have claimed that the woman in the picture is a paid actress, and that the whole incident was more or less staged.
In parallel, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claims that the hospital was used by Ukrainian right-wing extremists and that there were no health personnel in the building when the incident took place.
– The interview with Marianna first appeared in Kremlin-supported Telegram channels, which are controlled by the FSB (Russia’s federal security service, journ.anm.). Only after that was it picked up by other media, he says.
view more
–
Well-known propagandist
According to Rybak, the woman who interviews Vyshemirskaya in the clip is employed by the Kremlin-supported news agency EADaily.
– She is a well-known propagandist. EADaily has been spreading Russian propaganda for years.
Saturday writes English Sky News that Vyshemirskaya has apparently been evacuated to Russia, or to a separatist-controlled area of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
– We still do not know where Marianna is. It is very likely that she speaks under Russian coercion. Therefore, I would not put my trust in any of what she says in the interview until we know more.
He adds:
– Do not forget that Russia has a long tradition of obvious and blatant lies. Why should they stop now?
Reacts strongly: – Brutally
Experts respond
Rybak is not alone in suspecting that the interview is an active propaganda move from Russia.
Several experts have pointed out that the story Vyshemirskaya tells contradicts itself on several points.
One of them is the award-winning Bulgarian grave journalist Christo Grozev, who has a leading role in the journalist collective Bellingcat’s Russia investigations and has previously been central in their investigation into the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
He summarizes the content of the video like this, in a post on his Twitter-side:
– Kremlin: “We bombed a maternity ward because it was a recruitment center for Azov (Azov Battalion, editor’s note) But we did not bomb it, the Ukrainians did. Besides, there were no pregnant women there, only actresses. But here is the pregnant woman. She also played the other pregnant woman. The one who actually died ».
Russian grip: – Torture
Use and abuse
The same goes for human rights activist Thomas van Linge. He also goes so far as to suggest that the woman may be under pressure.
– The Kremlin’s propaganda is brutal, but very inconsistent. They make her move into all of the conspiracy theories around the hospital, so that the story as a whole becomes completely illogical, he writes.
DENIED AIR ATTACK: Marianna Vyshemirskaya, in a video posted on her Instagram page on Friday. Here she denied, among other things, Russian air strikes against Ukraine. Ukrainian expert suspects she speaks under Russian coercion. Photo: Screenshot / Instagram
view more
The Ukrainian journalist and propaganda expert Olga Tokariuk writes on her Twitter-side that Vyshemirskaya apparently had good intentions – but that Russian media have edited it in a way that suits Russian propaganda narratives.
Tokariuk is affiliated with CEPA (The Center for European Policy Analysis).
– I am afraid that Russian propagandists will use and abuse Marianna, and manipulate and edit everything she says to suit their narrative, she writes.
In the wake of the reactions to the video clip, Vyshemirskaya has published the following short comment on his Telegram channel:
– I told about what I saw, what I heard and what eyewitnesses have told. You get to draw your own conclusions.
–
