A Russian government-linked Twitter account on Friday shared an interview with Marianna Vishegirskaya, in which the young mother says the hospital was not hit by an airstrike last month and told AP reporters she did not want to take a video. allegations that are in direct contradiction to the AP report. In the interview, conducted by Russian blogger Denis Seleznev and filmed by Kristina Melnikova, Vishegirskaya is asked to give details of what happened at the hospital on March 9, the day of the bombing. It is not clear where Vishegirskaya is or under what circumstances the interview was filmed. The video was posted on Seleznev’s YouTube account and shared on Telegram and Twitter, while similar videos were also posted on Vishegirskaya’s personal Instagram account. Russian officials have repeatedly tried to question the Mariupol bombing, a key military target for Moscow, as images surfaced around the world and shed light on Russia’s attacks on civilians in Ukraine. In the new videos, Vishegirskaya says those trapped in the basement of the hospital after the attack believed the blasts were caused by “bombing”, not an air strike, because “no one” heard sounds indicating that the bombs had fallen from planes. However, eyewitness accounts and videos from AP reporters in Mariupol show evidence of an airstrike, including the sound of a plane before the explosion, a crater outside the hospital that was at least two floors deep and interviews with a police officer and a soldier at the scene. which both referred to the attack as an “air strike”. At the time of the strike, the AP journalists were in another part of Mariupol. They clearly heard a plane and then two explosions. They went to the 12th floor of a nearby building where they filmed two large plumes of smoke in the distance towards the hospital. It then took about 25 minutes to reach the hospital. “Until then, you would hear a plane almost every 10, 15 minutes and there would be air raids all over the city,” AP video journalist Mstyslav Chernov said in an interview on Saturday. “That was closer to us, so we heard it very well.” Chernoff said that when air raids take place, the sound of an airplane is followed by the sound of an explosion within seconds. On March 9, he said he heard an airplane and then two bombs shortly afterwards. Vishegirskaya also notes in an interview released Friday that she clearly heard two explosions. “We heard the sound of a missile. “Then I personally instinctively put on a blanket and then we heard the second missile,” says Vishegirskaya, who speaks Russian. Vishegirskaya also says in the video that she repeatedly told the AP that she did not want to be filmed, but the recordings of the AP reporters’ interactions with her contradict this. The video shows the first meeting of journalists with her outside the hospital, where she is wrapped in a blanket and looks directly at the camera. “How are you?” Chernov asks and Visegirskaya answers: “Everything is fine. “I’m fine.” Someone outside the camera says, “Let’s go,” and she replies, “Yes, let’s go, please,” before entering the building with an emergency worker to collect her belongings. During the exchange, Vishegirskaya knows that she is on camera and makes no indication that she does not want to be filmed. AP reporters also said that neither she nor her husband ever said they did not agree to videotape or interview when they spoke to the couple on March 11, the day after they gave birth. In the video recorded that day, he discussed what he saw and heard in the hospital. The question of whether it was hit by airstrikes or bombings was not explicitly raised. The only report that Vishegirskaya made on the subject was that she was not sure where the strike came from. “I did not see with my own eyes, from whom he flew, from where, what and in what direction. “We do not know,” he told the AP on camera, adding: “There are many rumors, but in reality we can not say anything.” Vishegirskaya’s recently published comments actually contradict the points of discussion promoted by Russia after the bombing. The country’s embassy in the United Kingdom had released photos of Vishegirskaya’s AP and another woman injured on a stretcher, placing the word “FAKE” above the pictures and claiming that Vishegirskaya had posed in both with “realistic make-up”. The misinformation was repeated by Russian ambassadors to other parts of the world. The photos actually showed two different women and Vishegirskaya confirms in the new interview that she was injured in the attack and that the woman on the stretcher was someone else. The Russian government-linked Twitter account that shared the clip ignored the contradictions and portrayed the interview as a valid account. The AP was unable to identify the woman on the stretcher, but a surgeon confirmed that both she and her baby died from injuries sustained during the attack. Mariupol, a port city in the Sea of Azov that has been under siege for more than a month, has suffered some of the heaviest damage from the war and also symbolizes Ukrainian resistance to the invasion. Located in the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbass region, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years, occupying the city would give Russia an unbroken land corridor to the Crimean peninsula, which it occupied in 2014.
