At the beginning of April 2022, an almost seven-minute video interview with Marianna Podgurskaya (Vyshemirskaya) appeared on Telegram channels and the media, which supposedly forces a new look at the shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol in March. We decided to find out whether this interview really proves the validity of the official Russian position.
March 9, 2022 first Ukrainian authoritiesand then Western reporters published several photos and videos from the destroyed maternity hospital in Mariupol. The most famous was the photograph of Marianna Podgurskaya (married Vyshemirskaya) - a local beauty blogger who ended up in that hospital. Some Telegram channels, and after them a number of Russian media after analyzing these materials statedthat the shots were staged. “Verified” analyzed the arguments of supporters of this version and came to the conclusion that it contradicts the available data (we published March 12).
On the evening of April 1, 2022, Telegram channel “PMC Media” (almost 70,000 subscribers at the time of writing) published a video in which “the same girl who, after the shelling of the Mariupol maternity hospital, was in all the photos in all the media, tells how the maternity hospital was turned into a barracks for Ukrainian militants.” At the same time, videos began to be posted in larger channels, for example, "Urgent, now" (more than 200,000 subscribers), “Z ?Reports of the militia of New Russia (DPR, LPR, Ukraine, war)” (almost 300,000 subscribers) and "Signal" (562,000 subscribers). Three weeks ago the authors of the latter actively convinced his readers that the events related to the maternity hospital in Mariupol are “a huge production.”
The next morning on the YouTube channel of blogger Denis Seleznev (in 2016, in a conversation with Dmitry “Goblin” Puchkov, he called himself as the head of the sociological service of the DPR) appeared the original interview, which, as it turns out, lasts a full 24 minutes. Then the media picked up the baton. So, in the story of Channel One, released on April 2, it says: “There was no air raid. A popular blogger in Ukraine, Marianna Vyshemirskaya, debunked one of the main fakes that were actively used by Western media. This is the same pregnant woman whose photographs spread all over the world after the alleged bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital.” They talked about the interview in a similar vein "Ren-TV", "News", newspaper "Sight", Ura.Ru and other media. And in Komsomolskaya Pravda came out article entitled “The fake about the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol was exposed by the “heroine” of the filming herself.”
Vyshemirskaya’s interview confirms the conclusions of our previous analysis: the photos and videos published in March were not staged.
Vyshemirskaya confirms that she was indeed pregnant and was in the maternity ward of Mariupol Hospital No. 3 (sometimes called maternity hospital No. 3 or the third maternity hospital). When the building came under fire on March 9, Vyshemirskaya, along with other women in labor and staff, went down to the basement, from where they were soon evacuated. During the evacuation, she was captured by Associated Press (AP) photographers Mstislav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka. At the same time, in an interview, Vyshemirskaya confirmed that it was not only her who was removed - contrary to the initial statements of a number of Russian media and Telegram channels, another woman was carried on a stretcher, also pregnant and, unlike Vyshemirskaya, seriously wounded. Her name has not yet been named, but knownthat the doctors could not save either her or the child.
Before the shelling, the maternity ward was working and was not captured by Azov. Vyshemirskaya spells this out more clearly in her Instagram stories: “Do not confuse the first maternity hospital, which is a perinatal center and is located on the outskirts of Mariupol - it was occupied by the military at the end of February. That is, they asked all women in labor to go home, the rest were transferred to the third maternity hospital, where I was from March 6 to March 9 inclusive. That is, it functioned, and there were staff, pregnant women and women in labor.” From these words we can conclude that armed people seized maternity hospital No. 1. But the woman knows about the fate of this institution only second-hand: the women who were in labor with her told about it, and were transferred from there to the maternity ward of Hospital No. 3.
Let’s look at the conclusions that some Russian media and Telegram channels made based on interviews.
There was no air raid
In state media and pro-government Telegram channels, Vyshemirskaya’s interview was presented as evidence that there was no air raid on the maternity ward. The girl, indeed, repeatedly says that neither she, nor other women in labor, nor their husbands heard the sounds of airplanes flying over the building. From this she concludes that it was not air bombs that destroyed the hospital buildings.
In the first days after the appearance of photos and videos from the maternity ward of Mariupol Hospital No. 3, three versions of what happened were discussed. According to one, the airstrike was carried out by the Russian Air Force, according to another — it was shelling by long-range Russian artillery. Finally, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that the two explosions were organized by the Ukrainian military - more precisely, by the “Nazi Azov battalion.” Vyshemirskaya’s words are interpreted as evidence of the Russian version.
Meanwhile, military experts with whom Verified and our colleagues from Meduza were able to talk (we prepared this analysis together and are publishing it at the same time) claim that you may not be able to hear a flying bomber from the ground. “You can’t always hear planes if they don’t drop free-fall bombs, but launch air-to-ground missiles from a distance or glide bombs (but Russia is only developing such bombs, as far as I know),” says Pavel Luzin.
Another expert, who asked not to be named, agrees with him: “An airplane can release a guided bomb while being at a distance of 20 km from the target (and not above it) - then the plane will not be visible or heard. Conventional bombs are thrown from a height of 7–8 km, being almost directly above the target (the distance can be 1–2 km) according to the radar sight and GLONASS.” According to him, an ordinary, non-supersonic plane may not be heard behind the clouds, and much also depends on the weather: “At high pressure you can hear it further.” In order for the plane to be heard accurately, it must fly below 5000 m. According to the expert, the Russian Air Force is armed with different types of aircraft and a large number of different guided and unguided munitions, so it is difficult to say what happened in this particular case.
Vyshemirskaya herself, in fact, does not reproduce the version of the Russian Ministry of Defense, which asserts, as if the Ukrainian “punishers” themselves staged explosions near the hospital. According to her, together with other people who took refuge in the basement, they decided that it was “a shell that came from somewhere else.” At the same time, other eyewitnesses of the shelling claim that they heard the plane. AP reporters Mstislav Chernov and Evgeny Maloletka claim that the sound of a flying bomber is heard in the first seconds of this video. In any case, if Vyshemirskaya did not actually hear the sounds of a flying plane, this cannot indicate that there was no air raid.
AP photographers appeared on the scene immediately, filmed Vyshemirskaya without permission and hid a video where she denied the fact of the air raid
Vyshemirskaya claims that near the maternity hospital she asked AP journalists Chernov and Maloletka not to film her, they ignored this request and thereby “got” her into this story. When asked how quickly the journalists arrived at the hospital, Vyshemirskaya replies that immediately. Finally, Vyshemirskaya says, Chernov and Maloletka did not publish an interview with her in which she refutes the fact of the air raid (they recorded this interview on March 11, two days after the shelling and after the birth of her child).
When preparing reports and news stories, people included in the frame are not required to consent to the publication of materials with their participation. Moreover, from video, published by AP, it is obvious that Vyshemirskaya did not ask journalists to stop filming (1:57–2:17).
Chernov and Maloletka say they reached the hospital about 25 minutes after the explosions, ahead of police, military and rescue services. At the same time, being in another point of the city, Chernov was able photograph and the moment of the explosion itself: in his video, loud sounds are heard, a shock wave is visible, and smoke rises above the buildings near the place where the reporters were. Therefore, they were not far away, and it is not surprising that they were able to arrive quite quickly. Moreover, they could have arrived even earlier if they had not stopped at another building on the way to charge the cameras (this is also visible in their video).
The interview with Vyshemirskaya, which Chernov and Maloletka recorded on March 11, was posted publicly on the AP video archive website, but without asking what happened to the maternity hospital or her answer. Later on the AP website this conversation was published entirely - and one can be convinced that Vyshemirskaya misremembered or deliberately distorted the content of her own answer. In fact, she did not deny the air raid, but literally said the following: “We don’t know from whom it came, from where, what and where. That is, there are a lot of rumors, but in fact we cannot say anything about this” (04:22).
Is it possible to trust Vyshemirskaya at all? Was she forced to say anything specific?
It is impossible to answer these questions accurately.
Vyshemirskaya says that she was able to evacuate from Mariupol, and the interview was conducted by journalists Denis Seleznev and Kristina Melnikova, who constantly work for the self-proclaimed DPR and the troops accompanying them. That is, it is almost certainly located either on territory controlled by the unrecognized republics or in Russia. The first is even more likely, given that, according to Vyshemirskaya, before moving to her husband in 2020, she lived in Makeyevka, which has been on the territory of the DPR for eight years.
Nevertheless, there is no reason to assert that Vyshemirskaya was forced to pronounce someone else’s prepared text. In particular, she does not use many Russian propaganda clichés. Thus, the word “special operation” is not heard even once in the 24 minutes of the interview, while these events are called war five times (once by the blogger asking the questions). Vyshemirskaya never mentions the Azov regiment, which, according to Russian propaganda, captured medical institutions in Mariupol. So, according to Vyshemirskaya, maternity hospital No. 1 was occupied by the military, and she gives a completely rational explanation for this (and does not repeat the propaganda that they used people as human shields): “They need energy, there is no electricity in the city, and the building of the first maternity hospital is equipped with solar panels.”
Separately, Vyshemirskaya’s appeal to the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky was recorded with a call to “negotiate and seek compromises,” which was inserted into the recording after the interview. We cannot say whether this appeal was her own initiative or was made at someone’s request or under pressure.
Not true
- Is it true that the Ukrainians falsified a report about the shelling of a maternity hospital in Mariupol?
- Is it true that the video from Buchi shows one deceased moving his arm while the other sits down?
- Is it true that the Ukrainian army used the synagogue in Uman for military purposes?
- Is it true that CNN in its tweet passed off a hotel in Serbia as a destroyed Ukrainian hotel?
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