Influencer from Ukraine: "My photo was misused for lies"

Created: 05/18/2022, 10:32 am

By: Marvin Ziegele

Ukrainian rescue workers and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine.

© Evgeniy Maloletka/dpa

A young woman gives birth to her child in Mariupol.

Shortly before that, the hospital is bombed. 

KIEV – Marianna Vyshemirsky becomes a mother amid the Ukraine conflict.

The image in which the young woman escapes from a maternity hospital bombed by Russia has become one of the best-known images of the Ukraine war (see tweet).

But the photo was used against the young mother, as she reported in an interview with the BBC.

Before the war, Marianna Vyshemirsky worked as a beauty influencer.

She advertised beauty products on relevant social media, her husband Yuri worked in the Azovstal steel mill, which was also to become one of the central scenes of the Ukraine conflict.

"We had a quiet and simple life," she told the BBC, "and then of course everything turned upside down."

Ukraine news: picture of pregnant woman goes around the world

It's a difficult time giving birth to your daughter in a war zone in Ukraine, especially when you're in the middle of an information battle on top of your own life being in danger.

When she was taken to the hospital to give birth, Mariupol was already being shelled.

She reported that on May 9, a massive explosion rocked the hospital.

"You could hear everything flying around, shrapnel and stuff," she said.

"The noise rang in my ears for a long time."

The women took shelter in the basement with other civilians.

Ms Vyshemirsky suffered a cut on her forehead and fragments of glass lodged in her skin, but a doctor told her she did not need stitches.

However, what she needed, she explains, was to get her belongings out of the rubble of the hospital.

She asked a police officer to help her back into the house.

That's how the picture came about, the young woman wrapped in a duvet and a bloody forehead.

Ukraine News: "I received threats that I would be killed"

False claims that the images were “staged” then surfaced on a pro-Russian Telegram channel.

Vyshemirsky's beauty blog was used to suggest she was an "actress" who used makeup to fake injuries.

These claims have been repeated and reinforced by senior Russian officials and state media.

Because Marianna Vyshemirsky didn't have access to the internet at the time, according to the BBC, she didn't see the photos until days later.

At this point, she was inundated with accusatory and threatening messages on Instagram.

She found both the trolling and the false accusations shocking.

"I received threats that I would be found, that I would be killed, that my child would be cut up," she said.

Influencer from Ukraine criticizes the press: "No other pregnant women interviewed"

"It was really insulting to hear that because I was there," she says.

However, she refrains from directly criticizing the Russian officials who have spread false information about her.

Instead, she criticized the Associated Press, which provided the photo.

"I was offended that the journalists who posted my photos on social media didn't interview other pregnant women who could confirm that this attack really happened." (marv)