LONDON: Russia said on Thursday a Ukrainian claim that it bombed a children’s hospital in Mariupol was “fake news” because the building was a former maternity hospital that had long been taken over by troops.

“That’s how fake news is born,” Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Twitter.

Polyanskiy said Russia had warned on March 7 that the hospital had been turned into a military object from which Ukrainians were firing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of carrying out genocide after Ukrainian officials said Russian aircraft bombed the children’s hospital on Wednesday.