Twitter removed two posts from the Russian embassy in London that claimed the bombing of a Ukrainian hospital by Russian forces had been fake.
The Mariupol hospital was attacked on Wednesday, leaving three dead.
But the embassy tweets made unsubstantiated claims that the hospital was not operational at the time and that the injured women pictured at the scene were actresses.
Twitter told the BBC that the tweets violated rules “related to the denial of violent events”.
Embassy officials have offered no evidence to back up their claims, and the BBC’s disinformation team has found evidence to contradict the allegations.
The embassy claimed that the hospital had been “not operational for a long time”. However, a post from a week ago on the hospital’s Facebook page called for fuel to keep operations going.
Reports from Mariupol last week – from the Associated Press and Sky News – also said it was treating bombing victims and that the maternity ward had been moved to the basement.
The allegation that a beauty blogger was used to fake photos of a pregnant woman at the scene was also disputed, as the woman in question, who lives in the city, is seen pregnant in Instagram posts dating back to last month.
Initial claims that Ukraine faked the attack did not come from the embassy. They started trending among Russian users of the Telegram messaging app that same day and were later mentioned in state TV news bulletins and chat shows.
Another claim circulating that the beauty blogger also pretended to be another woman caught in the bombing and photographed at the scene is also false. A look at the high-resolution images of the other woman featured in the claims shows that she looks nothing like the beauty blogger. Those are two different women.
Finally there were accusations that the hospital had been taken over by a far-right battalion of the Ukrainian army. So far there is no evidence that this was the case.
All of these claims continue to circulate online, despite the tweets being deleted.
The pregnant beauty blogger’s Instagram account has also become a target for online trolls and conspiracy theorists.
Social media companies have been trying to tackle misinformation on their platforms, with many big tech companies blocking Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik.
But Twitter has not banned several accounts linked to Russian government organizations, including Vladimir Putin’s official Twitter account.
The Russian embassy account also remains active.
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