“The first casualty of war is truth”
French President Macron last Thursday said on TV: “France condemns strongly the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol which is an immoral act of war.” Wish Macron could act that good too to condemn the bombing in Yemen by France’s ally and one of the biggest buyers of France weapons and arms if not its biggest arms client, Saudi Arabia. At least he could put to good use his acting talent that was famously reported by French tabloids melted the heart of his 24 years senior drama teacher, who later on became his wife Brigitte Macron.
France as the third biggest seller of arms in the world after the US and UK could at least condemn the bombing in Yemen by the West-backed Saudi that caused an atrocious and immoral humanitarian crisis in Yemen that has caused 377,000 deaths and 70% (264,000) of those were children under age 5 since the war erupted in 2015. 15.6 million Yemenis live in extreme poverty, and 8.6 million suffer from under-nutrition, according to the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) report.
As the outpourings of condemnation of Russia’s invasion continue, Western governments have sent massive aid packages to Ukraine and social media campaigns fill in the gaps – while in Yemen the United Nations announced that by March it would likely cut aid to 8 million people in a country that it calls home to the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. Almost one-third of the population does not have enough food to satisfy even basic nutritional needs. Underweight and stunted children have become a regular sight and the worst is yet to come, as the Russian invasion has led to increased fuel and food prices and as humanitarian funding dries up.
The war on Yemen gets very little media coverage and is rarely mentioned by political leaders in the West. Violence in Yemen is at the highest levels since 2018, with a civilian killed or wounded every hour on average.
The bombing of the Mariupol maternity hospital was reported widely by the mainstream media that garnered more condemnations and sanctions for Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded that the facility had not been used by civilians for some time before it was hit. The building had been used as a base by the far-right Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard, the top Russian diplomat claimed on Thursday, during a press conference in Turkey.
A German journalist named Thomas Roper dissected the video of the Mariupol maternity hospital bombing and found that it’s just one more propaganda fantasy (like those Iraqi soldiers dumping 300+ babies out of incubators after the invasion of Kuwait).
He wrote an article exposing this staged war propaganda on Anti-Spiegel.
Here is the English translation of the article, translated by Barbara Widhalm:
Russia bombs a maternity clinic? Marianna and the new “incubator lie”
Outraged, Western media report on an alleged Russian airstrike on a maternity clinic in Mariupol. The “victims” are actors, however, which anyone can easily verify.
Anti-Spiegel
March 10, 2022
Russland bombardiert eine Geburtsklinik? Marianna und die neue Brutkastenlüge | Anti-Spiegel
Introducing: Marianna
Photos spreading through media show a pregnant woman who is being evacuated from a maternity clinic.
In addition, photos are shown where a pregnant woman is being carried away on a stretcher. When you look closely, you see that it is the same young woman. She changed clothes, but underneath the new outfit you can still see the pyjamas, in which she came down the stairs. Was a pregnant woman leaving the bombed hospital asked to change clothes, before putting her on a stretcher and bringing her to the ambulance?
Is this realistic, considering the shock and injuries, which would be expected in such a situation? Let’s see what really happened here, and we will get to meet this young woman again a little later in this analysis.
First of all, the question arises: Who is this woman? Her name is Marianna. She is a beauty blogger from Mariupol, a photo model. Everyone can see her Instagram account, under “gixie_beauty.”
The empty clinic
Ukrainian president Zelensky posted a video on Telegram showing the maternity clinic, which was filmed immediately after the explosion (see the still burning fires and the posted time of the video). The video is shocking, but is has a “minor blemish:” You can see the destroyed interior of the hospital, but nowhere can you see blood, or victims who have died or are injured.
The Russian speaking person filming reports that Russian airforces just bombed a maternity clinic. To make it even more dramatic, he shouts into the obviously empty building “Is anyone here?”
When you look at the damage done in this video or a clinic in operation, all patients, employees who were on the side of the destroyed windows (those were the rooms with hospital patient beds), would have had to be severely injured or killed by the impact of the glass panes and broken glass. But there were neither victims or blood to be seen.
The propaganda video
A video was published on YouTube showing the explosion and what happened immediately after. Every professional can see that the video was filmed using a professional camera and stabilizer. A video taken from a cell phone would be blurred, especially the scenes when the person filming is running.
(1) Наслідки авіаудару по дитячій лікарні та пологовому в Маріуполі – YouTube
By the way, Marianna is once again featured in the title picture. Which we will return to shortly. First, let’s look at the other details of this very interesting video. Minute .45 shows how Marianna is being carried down the stairs on a stretcher, the same stairs that she walked down herself in her pyjamas as shown in the picture above. Here you can see Marianna again in her pyjamas walking down the stairs.
And you can also see Marianna on the photo above, which another photographer took. This video takes other angles, and her belly is pixeled out in this video. So you can see that many cameras must have been involved. The camera follows Marianna all the way to the ambulance.
Stage directions
There are more scenes in this 3.5min video that show that this is a staged video. For example, in min 1.31 a woman appears with a child in her arm (the child is calm and doesn’t cry). The woman calmly exits the maternity clinic and is not panicked, as you might expect from such an occasion. Instead, she calmly askes in Russian: “Where should I go now?”
There are more such strange scenes. For example, in min 1.42 you can see a young boy calmly exiting the clinic, but in min 1.50 he suddenly weeps hysterically and is being calmed down by the soldiers, before he goes back into the clinic. Why do he and the others go back into the clinic from which he “escaped”? In order to film the scene of exiting the clinic again?
The soldier, by the way, is also interesting. During minute 0.40 he completely unprofessionally bandages the head of a woman, looking hectically toward the camera, as if to make sure he is doing it correctly. But why is a soldier bandaging the head of a woman, given that this is a hospital in which plenty of physicians and nurses work who could do a much better job than him?
Marianna is everywhere
In Min 2.09 we can see Marianna again, by the way. As you can see from the title image of the video, she is standing in front of the clinic, wrapped in a blanket. Although the same Marianna has already been brought to an ambulance on a stretcher, filming the entire way of the stretcher being carried: down the stairs (which she earlier walked down herself in her pyjamas), across the destroyed entryway/patio all the way to the ambulance. And all the sudden she is standing in front of the clinic, wrapped in a blanket this time around.
Starting min 2.13, the same soldier is back on the scene. This time he tells the cameraman what happened and how they are evacuating the injured.
Always just at the “right” moment
Everyone can notice without too much effort that the footage from the alleged Russian attack is staged. And the footage came at a fitting moment, because that very day Zelensky was pleading for a no-fly zone from NATO. Just at the right moment, to “fortify the argument,” there was a Russian airstrike of a maternity clinic.
There is a system/strategy in place here. We can all recall the big explosion in Charkiw, which permeated the media for days. This explosion happened immediately before Zelensky addressed the EU parliament in his strong appeal.
This story of the maternity clinic also reminds me of the “incubator” lie.
Incidents in maternity clinics, attacks on defenseless newborns – these images shock anyone and intercept logical thinking. And this exactly is the purpose of propaganda: The purpose is to unleash emotional responses and to evoke a desired atmosphere including an enemy image.
War propaganda instead of critical journalism
When you can show so easily that the alleged airstrike of the maternity clinic was a staged plot of the Ukrainian government, why can the “journalists” of the western “quality media” not see this? Or to ask this question differently: Why does no “quality journalist” explain to me why this was not a fake, and how Marianna, as “poor pitiable victim” of a Russian airstrike, appears three times, in various different roles, in the same video, which are allegedly proving the Russian attack?
This is war propaganda in its purest form following the guidelines of war propaganda. What we are seeing here is Rule 5 in action: “Enemy intentionally commits atrocities.”
Author’s bio:
Thomas Röper, born in 1971, has held numerous leadership positions as an expert for Eastern Europe and Russia in the finance sector. Today he lives in his chosen home St. Petersburg. He has been living in Russia for over 15 years and is fluent in Russian. Focus areas for his work in critical media analysis include how Russia is portrayed in the media in Germany, criticism of Western media reporting overall, and topics of geopolitics and the economy.
The beauty blogger received attacks on her social media accounts after the claims that she was a crisis actor and the Russian Embassy in UK’s tweets got removed by Twitter for tweeting that the beauty blogger has faked her injuries. The accusations of Marianna as a Mariupol crisis actor were rejected, censored, and labelled as part of the Russian disinformation campaign.
Forcing the Western narrative and outright censorship of Russian media (RT, Sputnik) and any media that challenge the Western narrative has been the norm in this unprecedented information war. For a country that called itself the country of freedom, liberty, and democracy but banned media such as RT (Russia Today) just adds to the long list of Western hypocrisies.
We are really entering into dangerous war propaganda and the Western leaders such as Macron not only help perpetuate it but actively take part in lying and spreading war propaganda. This Ukraine war also reminds me of the lies about the Iraq WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) as a pretext to go to war with Iraq.
More on the MSM(Mainstream Media)’s fake news on Ukraine can be seen here.
