People online have been sharing a video of a Ukrainian girl, allegedly injured by a Russian missile. However, the child's mother has issued a denial, saying the girl's injury was caused by a bicycle accident.
The video shows a little blonde girl having her foot bandaged by at least four nurses. She is singing the Ukrainian anthem.
Some posts, such as this one on Facebook from June 29, and this one on Twitter from the same day, claim that the video shows a little Ukrainian girl who was hit by a Russian missile.
"This little girl was injured by 🇷🇺 missiles in #Mykolayiv. And she is singing the National Anthem at the hospital. Unconquered #Ukrainian," said this post on the Twitter account ArmyInform, which presents itself as the official account of the information agency of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.
The real official Twitter account of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence is available here.
This post refers to the Russian missile strike in Mykolaiv, in the south of the country, on June 29. The video has been viewed more than 35,000 times.
Another post from June 30 with the same video and a caption in French accrued more than 70,000 views on Twitter.
On Facebook, the post is accompanied by a video of the explosion following Russian strikes on the Kremenchuk shopping centre in Ukraine on June 27, suggesting that the girl was injured in the blast.
A bicycle accident, not a missile injury
When you search for the words "little girl" and "Mykolaiv" in Ukrainian on TikTok, you can find a video from a person with the same surname as the little girl. The video was published on June 30.
"Dear friends, our beautiful Elizaveta Komarevich is a real star! But today, dishonest people on social networks made her look like a girl from Mykolaiv who escaped the bombings and is singing the national anthem ... Elizaveta sang the national anthem very well, [but] her leg [is] injured because she crashed her bike ... it happens!" the post explains.
On the same TikTok account, another video of the girl singing the national anthem was posted on June 29.
Reuters confirmed that the person who posted the denial is the girl's mother. She told Reuters that her daughter Elizaveta, aged four, had been injured in a bicycle accident and that claims that she had been injured in a bomb attack were false. She also explained that the family resides in the Ukrainian oblast of Ternopil, 800 km away from Mykolaiv.
