Russia is contradicting itself with wild, baseless claims about the Ukrainian maternity hospital it bombed

• The Russian army on Thursday made bizarre claims about a maternity and children's hospital that it bombed in Mariupol, Ukraine.
• A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman baselessly charged that Ukrainian forces "staged" the deadly attack.

The Russian army on Thursday made bizarre claims about a maternity and children's hospital that it bombed in the port city of Mariupol, Ukraine — baselessly charging that Ukrainian forces "staged" the deadly attack.

Three people, including a child, were killed and 17 others were wounded in the Russian airstrike on the children's and maternity hospital in the besieged southeast Ukraine city on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials have said.

Images taken at the destroyed hospital showed several injured civilians, including a bloodied pregnant woman, being hauled away on a stretcher.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed on Thursday that the airstrike was a "completely directed provocation to maintain the anti-Russian stir among the Western audience."

Konashenkov falsely claimed that the hospital had been evacuated of staff before the strike, and later claimed without evidence that the aftermath of the Russian bombing was caused by "staged explosions."

But the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman made the baseless claims just hours after Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, admitted Russia was behind the attack.

While discussing the Russian airstrike, Lavrov spread his own baseless excuse, saying that Russia had bombed the maternity hospital because it contained Ukrainian militants.

The hospital, Lavrov claimed, was empty of patients and that Russia had told the United Nations it was being used as a Ukrainian militia base.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has condemned the attack as an "atrocity" that showed Russia was committing "genocide."

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched Russia's war against Ukraine on February 24, targeting several cities with military strikes.

Translations by Oleksandr Vynogradov.