Marianna Vyshemirsky standing outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol
(Picture: AP)A Ukrainian beauty influencer who survived an attack on a Mariupol maternity hospital has revealed how she received death threats after she was falsely accused of “acting”.
An image of heavily pregnant Marianna Vyshemirsky outside the damaged hospital, wrapped in a duvet with her forehead bloodied, appeared on newspaper front pages around the world and went viral on the internet in the aftermath of the shelling in March.
The 29-year-old became the target of a Russian disinformation campaign as Moscow tried to spread lies about the attack.
The Russian embassy in London claimed she was an “actress” in “realistic make-up” in a series of tweets.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed the hospital had been taken over by neo-Nazis before the attack and that no patients were inside.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries branded the Russian embassy’s comments “fake news” and Twitter removed the post for “denial of violent events”.
Ms Vyshemirsky has now revealed how she faced death threats in the wake of Russian falsehoods.
In her first major interview with Western media since being evacuated to her hometown in a part of Russian-controlled Donbas, she told the BBC: “I received threats that they would come and find me, that I would be killed, that my child would be cut into pieces.”
She described the abuse she received on her Instagram account as shocking, adding: “It was really offensive to hear that, because I actually lived through it all.”
Ms Vyshemirsky said her “quiet” life was “turned upside down” when the maternity hospital was hit as she chatted to other mothers on a ward.
“You could hear everything flying around, shrapnel and stuff,” she said. “The sound was ringing in my ears for a very long time.”
She sheltered with other in a basement and suffered a forehead cut as glass fragments lodged in her skin. She was later photographed by an AP photographer as she waited to go back into the ward to retrieve her possessions from the ruins.
Amidst the disinformation war, Ms Vyshemirsky gave birth to a baby girl, Veronika. “She chose to show up at a difficult time,” she said. “But it’s better she arrived under these circumstances than not at all.”
