Russian officials keep being caught telling lies:

But on Thursday, the Russian Embassy in the U.K. sought to take things one step further, tweeting out a photo of woman who has become the poster person of the atrocity—a young, blonde, heavily pregnant woman in maternity pajamas, wrapped in a dirty blanket with blood dripping down her face.

The embassy tried to insinuate that the woman—who has been identified as blogger Marianna Podgurskaya, according to one of the many photographers who took her photo crawling out of the rubble, and whose open Instagram account @gixie_beauty has chronicled her pregnancy—was a crisis actor.

“She actually played roles of both pregnant women on the photos,” the Russian embassy tweeted, going on to say the first photo was taken by Evgeniy Maloletka, a freelance photographer and filmmaker who has been risking his life to chronicle the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the beginning—and whom Russia considers a provocateur.

The embassy neglected to mention how many other photographers, including Associated Press photographer Mstyslav Chernov, also photographed the traumatized blogger, whose life was threatened in the attack that killed three people. The Daily Beast has reached out to Podgurskaya for comment and it is unclear how her late-term pregnancy is progressing after the attack.

Source: Russia Says Injured Pregnant Woman Is a Crisis Actor. She’s Actually a Pregnant Blogger.

This has resulted in Russia developing a reputation for lying. Which is perhaps not the reputation they want but it is the reputation they have established because they do this a lot.

Russia is not winning the propaganda battle – they are losing it big time. And some think they may lose their war as well but only time will tell.

Update: Even Russian state media is coming as close as they can to questioning the point of the war and the impact it will have on both Russia and Ukraine.