-- top of the hour. hello, welcome to this week's edition of the media show. we've all seen russia's invasion of ukraine and the war that has followed. there is also now an information war that's playing out in media in russia, in ukraine and around the world and in this edition of the programme, we want to understand the role the journalists within ukraine are playing on the perception we have of this conflict but we want to find out what other factors can influence that perception as well. let's begin with ivan kolpakov, editor—in—chief of an independent news outlet meduza which publishes via latvia. ivan, thank you forjoining me. can you tell me where you are now? hi. i can't tell you, unfortunately, where i am. i cannot disclose this information due to security reasons.

and while you are travelling, ivan, can you still publish meduza? yes, sure, sure. you know, we have remote office, entirely remote office during the last two years as have many media outlets in the world, i guess, and meduza is based in riga, latvia, but it is a russian—speaking media outlet and probably the biggest russian independent media so far. and we work from so many cities, you know, from different countries. so, it is possible, yes. and in the week that has passed since this invasion happened, have you still been able to reach your audience in russia? yes. we are ok. unlike many of our colleagues. but we think that we are about to be blocked on the territory

of russian federation so we've seen a lot of bad signs during this week. right after the invasion, russian authorities said that the media outlets cannot use actually the word �*war�*. they have to use this �*special operation�* phrase to describe what's going on in ukraine. also they said that the media has to cover the events in ukraine based on the official sources, and those official sources are state agencies that are lying and manipulating the russian audience or the russian ministry of defence, which also do not disclose trustful information. crosstalk. and this, and this... it's not like, it's not the only problem with russian media right now because during the week, russian authorities started blocking independent media outlets, including the very important

and huge ones. yesterday, they have blocked the last and the only independent media, independent tv channel tv rain, they can broadcast on youtube but also there are signs that the authorities are going to block youtube in russia. and what you're describing is an escalation in the restrictions on media within russia. we're going to continue to talk you about this through this edition of the media show. ivan, from meduza, thank you very much. let's bring in luke harding, senior international correspondent at the guardian. luke, you are in ukraine and i don't know how much you want to tell us about your location?

i'm currently in lviv in the west of the country, i was in kyiv when the invasion started last week and the bombing began but it's interesting, ros, hearing you describe this as an informational war. i do think when reporting on this conflict, obviously you have to be sceptical of all information and try to verify, confirm our own sources and make phone calls, interview people and so on but when the invasion started, i was sheltering in a basement at my hotel with ukrainian families and children as russian aviation was taking out military targets and now, have seen an awful lot of civilians killed, especially in the last couple days in kharkiv, in kyiv and elsewhere, including a journalist, the first journalist of this conflict was killed yesterday and let's say his name, yevhenii sakun, he was a tv cameraman for kyiv live. he was hit by the second missile which struck the tv tower yesterday. now, that was not a military target, that was a civilian

target and a symbol of ukrainian statehood and he and four other people were killed. so the russian narrative is there are no civilians dying, there is no bombing in civilian areas which is clearly untrue, we have to treat the claim as untrue and of course report to the best of our ability, what is happening here on the ground. luke, thank you and the issue of war crimes have been raised repeatedly by the ukrainian president, president zelensky, by the european union and we heard borisjohnson raise it in prime minister's questions. next, let's bring in olga malchevska, a journalist at bbc ukrainian. olga, you are based in london and you also have colleagues in kyiv and across the country. help me understand how bbc ukrainian is covering this terribly difficult story for you. thank you very much for having me here and obviously, - it is quite hard for all of us. because we have our families on the ground and all of our colleagues in ukraine. - they do have their families .

there with them and they are trying to do their best . to provide this coverage because we understand that this is basically the only thing - we can do right now, - we are trying to do our best. but because of the extremely difficult security reasons - for our colleagues in kyiv- bureau, we are trying to take over as much as possible i here in london because our colleagues in kyiv quite often, they are not able to report - because either there - is shelling or they have been evacuated, _ as you might've heard. we have, before... before the active phase of invasion happened, i we were supposed to do, - from london, ourtv programme, a bulletin, which was taken by ukrainian tv partners i but now, obviously, we have taken over the webpage now as much as we can and so, we are trying, we have - increased our output - as well because we know that our colleagues in kyiv- from other media and other tv channels are not able -

to provide the same amount of coverage as they were doing before, so we are trying - to increase our coverage - from london as much as possible and we are hearing very goodl responses from our audiences when this audience is obviously able to respond to us. - in terms of emotional| challenges, which we, all of us have, as obviously, i you understand, it is extremely difficult but bbc ukrainian - as other ukrainian journalists, i'm pretty sure, have - experience of covering war on the ukrainian soil- because the first russian invasion happened in 2014 - when the annexation of crimea happened and we've learned how to be impartial and not biased i when we are doing our coverage and how to provide, how- to verify all of the content. we are getting, so even let's say... on friday night, friday morning when i was on my way-

to the studio to be a presenter for the bbc world and i got- a message from my family- that our house was bombed... i'm sorry, from my neighbour's, and i tried to get in touch- with my family to double | check that and obviously, i could notjust say. that it was my house, although i could recognise it. but i went to the official. sources, to other sources, to verify the pictures. and only when i got - the confirmation that it was definitely that address - when i got the confirmation from the official ukrainian i emergency service and also when i saw the same kind - of footage from my neighbour's, i was able to say that yes, that is that particular- building. so i am describing that to leti you know that such procedure

is the same for all our bbc ukrainian journalists, - so even if we emotionally know, let's say, that that object - was targeted or that person| was targeted unfortunately, we do verify it from several sources and we do not - report anything emotionally. we are double—checking - everything before we broadcast or put it on our website. i'm so sorry that it was your home that was hit and it's remarkable that you continue with journalism in that manner in these challenging circumstances. olga, thank you forjoining us for the moment. thank you. through the last couple of days we have been getting in touch with some journalists who are reporting in ukraine and asking them to record their thoughts on covering this war. one of those i got in touch with was lindsey hilsum, who's the international editor at channel 4 news. lindsey recorded this from a town in the east of ukraine. i think from the outside people think about safety more than anything else and of course that is important. but we also think about sleep and food and power and communications and fuel, because we cannot keep going unless we have those things. and also, the local staff we are working with, the local producer and driver, are they all right, other families all right?

these are... it isjust meaningless, isn't it? that is the story itself. i think in any war zone, you can't tell the big picture when you are right in it. you can only know what you have seen, and what people around you have told you. but i think it is tremendously important to put that into some kind of historical context. because if you don't put it into historical context, well, it is just meaningless, isn't it? it is just people being horrible to each other and cruelty, and this conflict is much as any other is about the history of russians, the position of ukraine as a nation. i can't do that unless i have had enough sleep so i come back to the beginning again. thank you, lindsey hilsum for recording that. the context of thing, the whole picture, is also on roland oliphant�*s mind.

senior correspondent from the daily telegraph, and he sent me this on whatsapp. i always tell people that war reporting, in a way, is the easiest kind ofjournalism. because in a way, it's kind of effortless. all you've got to do is go somewhere, see what's happening, talk to people, write it down, bang, there's your story. the flipside of that, which i really, really, really feel in this conflict, is you are a tiny, tiny cog in an absolutely enormous machine and you can see and know very little. people talk about first draft of history, pompousjournalists want to talk about the first draft of history. it's not. if it is, it's very whole draft because you don't know what is going on and your line of sight is very limited and i have not seen a single russian soldier yet, i have been close, i have heard them, i have heard them firing their guns and their cannons and artillery but i have not seen single russian. often, when i'm in a place, all i know is explosions

are occurring, or people are running or the people are scared. those people often don't know any more than i know. that's roland oliphant, the daily telegraph. luke harding, senior international correspondent at the guardian, you are still with us from the west of ukraine. do you agree with that, that it can be hard to find the whole picture when you are in the middle a conflict? i mean, iagree with both sentiments. yes, it's the purest form of reporting. when the day the invasion started, i went to kyiv's independence square and i did the most basic journalistic exercise of vox pops, i talked to people about how they felt and amazingly there was a coffee bar which was open and i talked to people about their feelings and expectations. and just on the logistics, it's true, i mean, half of your brain is dealing with trying to get the story out as accurately and as well and compassionately as possible to tell human stories

and i guess to bear witness about what is going on, but the other half is worrying about security, fixers, roads, in constantly shifting position where russia is advancing and the roadblock that was ok two hours ago may not be ok two hours later. so, it's uniquely challenging but i'm very glad i'm here and there is terrific reporting going on, both from international journalists like lindsey and roland but also first and foremost from ukrainianjournalists. there are practical challenges you are describing in that it's easier to report from territory controlled by the ukrainian government than territory in ukraine but controlled by russian troops. but there's a separate challenge, which is one side is sharing an awful lot more information than the other. president zelensky is posting videos on social media. the ukrainian military is releasing statistics. but, ivan kolpakov from meduza, the russian authorities are not giving us very much information at all so it is giving us a challenge to report the story

completely in the whole. well, it would be naive to hope that the russian authorities will provide some, i don't know, sustainable information about the conflict. because russian authorities are usually manipulating the public opinion through russian state—owned or state—controlled media and now, during the war, they are doing it even more actively than previously. we have been observing huge pressure throughout the last yearfrom independent media. meduza in april 2021 was marked as a foreign agent in russia, and it was a very challenging time for our editorial staff and a lot of other media outlets were labelled as foreign agents.

now they are just directly blocking the websites and they are now using it as a real censorship department of the russian state. so you don't trust any of the information coming from the russian authorities but olga, when you are reporting on this conflict and you need to understand what is happening in territory controlled by the ukrainian government but also russia—controlled territory, how do you get good information out of places where the russian troops are in control? we do consider all the official sources but we also doublecheck that information as much as we can, obviously, via other sources. we have people on the ground, we have bbc russia colleagues there in russia and we also use user—generated content and obviously we try to get in touch with those people and to speak to them.

obviously there are other challenges because we have to consider their safety and a duty of care policy and that is amazing, because as a media organisation we do think about the safety of those people. but, of course, we must and we do check all the sources which are available and also it is quite important for us to know that the narrative which the kremlin is providing to theiraudience, because it gives us the possibility to understand better the reaction of the audience. thank you, olga. luke and ivan, stay with us as well. let's bring in professor sam greene to our conversation. he's director of the russia institute at king's college in london. thank you forjoining us. at the beginning i said that the information war has the potential, at least, to influence the course of the actual war. do you think that is too overstated?

to a certain extent it is even to understate it. because the reactions are what matters and the reactions are to what people are seeing and hearing. so if you look at the reactions of the european government, the stunning decision by the german government to begin providing lethal aid and military aid to ukraine, that is an emotional decision and an emotional decision is driven by what people are seeing on television. the same story is true for decisions affecting the pace and scale of sanctions that we have seen. also, one of the reasons why we are seeing the stuff that ivan was talking about earlier in terms of crackdown on media and media, the narrowing of the information space, so they make it harder for russians to access facebook, youtube, apparently twitter as well, as well as putting, we are hearing expectations of accusations of treason and trials for treason against russianjournalists who report anything other

than the official line. and the reason is that the russian government itself is very nervous about the emotional reaction, i think, less of that of people in the west, i think they have given up, broadly, on trying to persuade people in europe and the us and the uk but they are very concerned about the potential for russians to see the pictures that we are seeing of destruction to kyiv, kharkiv, chernihiv and other cities around ukraine. sam, let's talk about just that. let's talk about the perspective of the russian media because russians are not getting the same story that those of us in the uk and elsewhere in the west are getting and we heard just this. in a recent report by the bbc moscow correspondent steve rosenberg, here is some of it. like many russians, valentina levena gets all her news from state tv and believes it. in russia, television is a powerful tool for shaping public opinion about the war. a lot of what they say

on television is truth. it is true. how do you know? when i read in a foreign newspaper that russians bomb kharkiv and so on, i know it is not true because they promised not to do this and they will never do this. ivan kolpakov, as you listen to that, explain to us how important state television is within russian society in terms of forming people's view of the world. it is very important. for putin, television is the most important media. when he became president, russian television was independent and in the first years of his presidency he decided to clean it up and he used television as a ground of his power for so many years.

also he was very surprised when he realised that the internet is also very important source of information for russians and around ten years ago the authorities started destroying independent internet as well. but still, russian television is very important within the country and since the kremlin has controls 80 or 90% of the market they can easily create a fake picture of reality. that is why so many people within russia, unfortunately... i would not say support... i would say are indifferent about what is going on in ukraine and it is a pity. it is horrible and it is also

one of the results, also one of the results of this situation with independent media. i'm not sure that i will be able to say that. ijust want, i think we all have to eat. it is a necessary thing to say if you are a russian journalist or anyone from russia right now. i want to say sorry to my ukrainian colleagues. i feel terrible, personally, i am broken and i am angry about russian authorities. i think it is a real catastrophe for russia and i am really sorry that we did not stop russian authorities from doing that. olga, would you like to respond? i would like to say thank you, ivan. i don't know if you remember meeting me in riga in the past before but, obviously sending empathy to you,

but a lot of love to all my colleagues in ukraine and people in ukraine and, unfortunately, i must add that as far as we get in our reports from the grounds, not all the russian audience can go in line with what ivan said. and that is something very heartbroken for us to hear. and as we listen to ivan painting a particularly bleak picture of independent media in russia, luke, if can i bring you in, you talk to us from ukraine, but russia is a country you know well and you have reported from there a great deal. how does the severity of the restrictions we're seeing in over the last 2a hours in russia compare to previous eras either the early days of russia in the 19905 and 2000s or the soviet union before that? well, ros, i think it is as bad

as it has ever been. it is interesting seeing the kind of slide in russia from the semi—democracy of the 19905 under boris yeltsin to a darker authoritarianism under early putin, to what we have now which is, essentially, a totalitarian — a full—blown totalitarian society, i would argue — with censorship, restrictions on access to real information and so on. and, look, there are some very, very... ivan and other russian colleagues, very many brave russian journalists out there, let's not forget people like anna politkovskaya who was murdered in 2006 and other journalists subsequently. it is a difficult profession and most pf the investigative reporters i work with on a number of stories including the panama papers have been forced to flee, including some in recent months, and we have also seen pressure on foreign journalists. i was the first western reporter to be thrown out of russia since

the ussr in 2011. and of course since then the bbc�*s sarah rainsford, a fine reporter, has been deported. and there is a sense of pressure on everybody of almost orwellian control. and as all of you in your different ways try to understand what is happening and report on what is happening, sam greene, i wonder if there is a fundamental challenge at the heart of this which is the man who started this war, the man who dominates russia is not a man who is easy to understand. he is not a man whojournalists have contacts with or contacts with people close to him very easily. he is very difficult to understand and that is by design. he wants to keep people guessing as to his intentions. i think a lot of us, my colleagues in the academic community, frankly, many of us were very sceptical about the prospect of a war,

certainly on this scale because it did not make any sense. it is hard to see how, as luke was saying, how russia ends up in anything other than a mich worse place at the end of this. and the same is true for putin. so we do struggle to understand what could possibly be motivating the decisions he is making now and, as a result, what will be motivating the decisions he is going to make in the future. he has made some robust threats about what he and the russian military might do going forward. so, unfortunately, we are left in similar ways to what i think roland and others were describing in the field, we are very much left in the dark trying to find some sense from little scraps of information and unable, really, to understand the big picture. ivan, i only have a minute left but i wonder if you think in one week's time you will still be able to publish meduza as you currently do? i don't think that we have much time left, to be honest. in the country.

i think that we will be blocked in a few days, maybe in a few hours. let's hope that does not happen. thank you for speaking to us and, luke, in a few seconds, you staying in the west of ukraine for the moment? yes. i want to stay with the story for as long as i can i expect this will be like iraq and syria, we journalists will be here for months and, ifear, years. thank you, luke, thank you to all of our guests on this edition of the media show. ivan kolpakov, olga malchevska, roland oliphant, luke harding and sam greene and lindsey hilsum. we will be back at the usual time next week but, for the moment, thank you for watching. goodbye. hello there.

this week starts off on a cold, chilly note for many of us, but temperatures have been rising as the week's worn on, in fact, we are staying in the very mild theme for the rest of the week, certainly for the working week, but it will become more unsettled with breezy, even windy conditions and also rain at times. now, we've got high—pressure to the east of us over the near continent, low pressure to the west over the atlantic. it's drawing up some very mild airfrom biscay and iberia. this weather front continuing to thicken the cloud up across more central parts of the country today. so we start off with quite a bit of cloud around, bit more cloud generally across england and wales than we had through yesterday morning. cold, frosty start for northern ireland but bright with some sunshine, some sunshine getting into western scotland, and it will also be bright across eastern england and the southeast, where, again, we will see temperatures very mild for the time of year 111—15 degrees, even double figures further north and west. it will be a little bit breezier as well. now, as we head through thursday night, it turns

cloudy, outbreaks of rain pushing up from central and southern areas, it will spread northwards across northern england and in toward scotland. so more cloud around, more breeze, so it will be a milder night for most of us and a mild night certainly for northern ireland. so that's how it's looking to end thursday, into friday we see a little more active weather front start to sweep in from the atlantic. that will bring more windy weather but also some heavier rain, which will start to push into southwest england and wales, northern ireland, as the day wears on. one or two showers ahead of it, but generally dry and bright, quite mild and windy across northern and eastern areas. this rain will be spilling its way northwards, and it will be a blustery day wherever you are, certainly windy across more northern and eastern areas, especially close to the coast. temperature wise, again, it's pretty mild, highs of 10—13 degrees, maybe not quite as mild as it will be for thursday because we've got more cloud and rain around. now, into the weekend, it stays unsettled, a particularly deep area of low pressure moves in towards the southwest and the west of the uk during the latter part of saturday into sunday,

and as that spreads northwards for sunday, we will see a mixture of sunshine and blustery showers. some of these will be quite heavy. so it is an unsettled picture into the weekend, some wet and windy weather pushing into the southwest later on saturday, and it's sunshine and showers for most on sunday. is driven by what people are seeing on television.

welcome to bbc news, i'm lewis vaughanjones. our top stories: ukraine accuses russia of bombing a children's hospital in the city of mariupol — officials say there are many dead and injured, with children buried under the rubble. the attack happened while a ceasefire was supposed to be in place. mariupol�*s mayor says president putin has destroyed a peaceful city. translation: they wanted to take the lives of our - children, ourwomen, our doctors, who had been fighting for 1h days of war, for the lives of every child who came under fire from enemy weapons. meanwhile, in neighbouring irpin, uprooted civilians have managed to leave the town. the united nations is calling the situation a "dark, historic first."

the town is being emptied of its residents. and it's notjust happening here.