From an Inside the Times column by Elizabeth Williamson headlined “Where Have I Heard That Before?”
After being condemned around the world for bombing a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Russia advanced a bogus conspiracy theory last month that was chillingly familiar to me.
Using unrelated images from social media, dodgy “reports” and constant repetition, the Russian Defense Ministry falsely claimed the airstrike was a “staged provocation” by Ukraine. The hospital, Russian officials falsely said, was nonoperational and a base for Ukrainian fighters. Moscow’s ambassador to the United Nations dismissed Associated Press photographs of the aftermath as “fake news,” and the Foreign Ministry alleged that bloodied, pregnant women evacuated from the rubble were crisis actors.