Twitter has removed a post by the Russian Embassy that claimed that a Ukrainian children's hospital that was bombed was hiding 'radicals'.
In the post, the embassy claimed that the hospital, which was attacked by Russia in the port city of Mariupol, was 'long non-operational' and was being used by Ukrainian armed forces. The embassy attributed the comments to Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
It went on to add that Moscow had warned the UN Security Council about this three days ago. But after complaints from the Government, Twitter removed the post from its site.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries came out against the message. She retweeted the post and said: "This is fake news."
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) reported the tweet to Twitter, which removed the post. In its place is a note that reads: "This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules."
Twitter said the rules were in breach of its hateful conduct and abusive behaviour policies as they denied violent events. However, the Russian Embassy UK account is verified with a blue tick and has more than 150,000 followers.
Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun, who is deputy leader of the Holos Party, called for Twitter to take down the account.
She said: “It’s not just some random or unknown account on Twitter. It’s an account of an official organisation, which is the embassy of the Russian Federation. So that is something that Twitter can follow up upon, I believe.
“I do think that Twitter at least should take care of the official accounts, like embassies and so on. Or just take them down, frankly speaking that would do the job as well, it’s easier just to take them down completely, than try to, you know, follow up on every single tweet, because they’re lying to us all the time.
“Whenever a Russian official is about to open his mouth, he is about to tell a lie. They just constantly lie. And we should just stop listening to him (Sergei Lavrov), we should stop transmitting whatever they’re saying.”
She added that there was photographic evidence of pregnant women being carried from the hospital.
“You did see the picture of the pregnant women taken out of that hospital. They were there.
“They were really pregnant, they were really hurt. And we had three people at least killed, confirmed, in that attack.”
