this is bbc news, the headlines... fierce street fighting has been hampering efforts to reach hundreds of people still trapped beneath a bombed theatre in the ukrainian port of mariupol. the mayor of the city has accused the russian army of forcibly transferring thousands of residents into russia. the un human rights office says more than 800 civilians have been killed in ukraine since the russian invasion began. most of the casualties were caused by heavy artillery, missile and air strikes. but un officials say they believe the real figures are considerably higher. president zelensky has criticised swiss firms which have chosen to continue doing business in russia — singling out the food giant nestle. the company said it had scaled back operations,

but continued to provide the russian people with essential goods. coming up at 6 am, breakfast with chris mason and nina warhurst, but first on bbc news, it's the media show. hello. as governments round the world race to sanction associates of vladimir putin, the british media is turning its attention to the role russian oligarchs have played in public life. this week, an edition of panorama aired allegations about the source of roman abramovich�*s wealth. at the weekend, the sunday times reported that newspaper owner evgeny lebedev was made a peer despite the concerns of the security services. and the gossip sites are all over the gilded lifestyles of the oligarch kids and their swanky homes around the world.

but why is it only now that the mainstream press has put the oligarchs in the spotlight? what stopped them before? just some of the big questions for my guests today — they are paul caruana galizia, who's a journalist behind a new podcast for tortoise media called lebedev: lord of siberia. adam bienkov is political editor at the byline times. laura kially is tech correspondent at politico. natalia antelava is a journalist and co—founder of the news site coda story. and lionel barber was editor of the financial times from 2005—2020 — he's now an investor in the new european. and lionel, if we start with you, the last time you were on the media show, you had just been to interview vladimir putin. what chance today, do you think, that a journalist could get an audience with that president? extremely limited, under 1%. maybe in seven weeks, if this is over, they might do something a staged event. but a one—on—one, like the

financial times did in 2019? very unlikely — and by the way, it did take five years to get to the kremlin for the post—midnight meeting. and when you did get there, what did you talk about? we talked about everything from the failed assassin of assassination of sergei skripal — which he dismissed, mr putin, as a story worth less than five kopeks — to his relations with china, the intervention in syria, and notably two stories that came out. one was when he declared, under questioning, the idea that liberalism, "the liberal idea," he said, "was obsolete." so he really felt the west was in decline, decadent, preoccupied by secondary questions of gender fluidity. and he also said, you know, that his risk appetite had gone up, basically, because "he who does not take the risk," he said,

quoting a russian proverb, "does not get to drink the champagne." ok, so do you recognise the man you see now? do you think he's changed? oh, i see him a lot puffier, by the way. looks to put on a bit of weight. and obviously the effects of two years isolation during covid has got to have had some effect, i think the circles gotten narrower — and i can exclusively reveal that when henry foy and i did sit down with him in the kremlin, the table was a good shorter than the one he's currently using. i was going to say, you weren't right at the other end of a very long table, then? it was the cabinet room with the czars of peter the great, catherine the great, and nicholas i. 0k, well, let's start closer to home, because the sunday times this weekend ran a story questioning why the editor of the evening standard, evgeny lebedev — not a household name by any

means, i should say — seemed to have such good access to borisjohnson. paul caruana galizia, you've explored this question too for tortoise media. take us back to the beginning. i mean, in 2009, the russian businessman and former kgb agent alexander lebedev bought the london evening standard for £1. his son, evgeny, became the paper's publisher. a year later, they bought the independent also for £1. just tell us a bit about it all. so we released the podcast on the monday before the sunday times followed it up. and it was commissioned actually in december — and back then, we thought it would be this really colourful profile of evgeny and his father, alexander, and really how they use the newspapers to build a lot of friendships with celebrities, people from the theatre world. but also with politicians, and famously boris johnson. and this was a kind of almost like an influence machine that they ran from these newspapers and through their parties.

but of course, the reporting changed character in february when russia invaded ukraine. so we started looking more closely at other aspects of the lebedevs. ok, when it comes to the owning of, you know, the independent, evening standard — i mean, mr lebedev, senior alexander lebedev already owned various bits of the media in russia, ithink, you know, as did some other oligarchs. is that more than just a business decision? and how did you read the way they then bought into the british media? sure, it is much more than a business decisions. so as a kind of strategy, survival for oligarchs, you need a lot more than wealth. you need some means of buying influence and promoting yourself, really, as a liberal or western—leaning figure, which is what a lot of the early oligarchs there. so in russia, alexander bought

a large chunk of novaya gazeta with gorbachev, and he also bought a smaller tabloid. there is some irony in that, that tabloid in 2008 reported allegations that putin was having an affair with a young gymnast. and within a few days, the tabloid was shut down. and it was really within a couple of weeks of that, alexander and evgeny started the process to buy the evening standard. so when we reported on that deal, for us, it was also about the openness of the british establishment in which we recount the press to foreign money. so the then—owner of the newspaper, lord rothermere, was looking to off—load it because it was a loss— making enterprise. and i think it's also significant that the deal was set up by by another newspaper editor, julie gray, who then went on to edit the newspaper. so it's a story about how

closely bound up a lot of these people are with with the oligarchy. 0k, well, let me bring in adam bienkov, because you published a big piece for byline times on saturday called the "johnson—lebedev letters". what did you find? so i first became aware of the relationship - between borisjohnson - and evgeny lebedev about ten years ago, in 2012, - when i spotted on the mayor of london's gift and hospitality registerl that he declared. a trip to italy paid for by lebedev. and i think that was a curious thing at the time, because it| wasn't in his official| diaries, hadn't been announced in any way. so i started to ask. questions about it — but it wasn't really picked up by anyone else at the time, i even when it sort of later appeared that this was i an annual enterprise. it kept on being sent out there. _ and even several years i after that, when we learnt about this trip in 2018, - when he ditched his security detail and attended this party, it wasn't really picked up - on many other news organisations. -

so i was interested, - i submitted some freedom of information requests justl to see — just kind of a fishing expedition, really — - to see how this relationship was built between boris johnson and lebedev. l and i obtained all of- the correspondence between them, all of the formal- correspondence between them right back from the start - of their relationship in 2009, up until when he left- office as mayor of london. and, following on from what paul was saying, i it just kind of gives i you the nuts and bolts of how this kind of- influence operation works. and it works both ways. so, by buying the eveningj standard, that's obviously the only paper really covering the london mayoralty. - and so, for borisjohnson, he needs to have a good l relationship with lebedev. and some of these early letters show how he reaches out - to lebedev, how they meet for a series of lunches. - and in one of them, johnson gives an aide memoire - of all of his pet projects that he would like — - he said that he'd be - thrilled to get the support of lebedev for these pet projects. - but also works the other way — so in some of- the correspondence, lebedev is pushing johnson to back.

a new arts festival, l which would be held and organised by lebedev. and the purpose of thisj festival, we understand from the minutes that have been released, as well, _ is to transform russia's global perceptions in london. - and what's interesting . about it is that lebedev, in these minutes, lebedev is going to reach out - to the kremlin in orderl to secure funding for it. let me just read you what evgeny lebedev has said in response to all of this. in the evening standard this week, he wrote, "i'm not a security risk to this country, which i love. my father, a long time ago, was a foreign intelligence agent of the kgb, but i'm not some agent of russia. the editorial coverage in the evening standard and the independent, of which i am also a shareholder, of russia and its activities over the time of my involvement in those titles makes that clear." and then he obviously adds, as well, "i've called on president putin to end the invasion of the country" that's ukraine — "in the most public way possible. paul, ijust wanted to bring

you injust, you know, mr lebedev is now a peer sitting in the house of lords. sunday times this week alleged that he was deemed a security risk during the vetting process, but that boris johnson disagreed with this analysis. i think you've been trying to find out exactly what happened. that's right. so we know that, you know, really, just a few weeks within borisjohnson being elected prime minister in december 2019, he decided to make evgenya member of the house of lords. so it was his personal nomination. and we know through documents we got through f0|as, that the house of lords appointments commission, sort of, semi—independent body, really part of the cabinet office that can vet but not veto nominees, was chasing evgeny for some personal information, the kind of stuff they routinely ask of nominees. the difference in this case is that they they turned to the security services for advice.

and it was only on 17 march that they finally got that advice. and they met to discuss it in a committee room in parliament, and were so disturbed by it, they immediately wrote to the prime minister, saying, "we feel deeply uncomfortable about this nomination, about evgeny's nomination. and would you reconsider, or would you consider an alternative ? " which they proposed. and he did indeed end up becoming a peer. that's right. so two days after that vetting report was discussed, evgeny met with boris johnson at downing street, and a few days after that, borisjohnson, the long and short of it, pushed his name through. so evgeny took his seat later that year. well, lionel barber, i mean, let me bring you in here just for your response to all of that, but also, you know, you would have watched the entrance

of the lebedevs into british media and high society. what did you make of it at the time, and how do you reflect on it now? well, i had lunch with evgeny when he asked me about what he should be doing, both as a proprietor and what he could do with the evening standard, which has been said was loss—making. and i also met the father in moscow, in 2008 on a trip where he was very much the man in jeans with the very expensive leather shoes. nothing wrong with that — but you could feel that ex—kgb. but we need to be clear about a few things here, and i don't want to discredit the reporting, but context, please. first of all, i mean, proprietors, that's what they do. they want to ingratiate themselves with the establishment, and they often get peerages. even editors get knighthoods and various honours, and prime ministers use patronage. johnson's appalling in this respect. so first of all, i'm not surprised that he wanted to give him a peerage.

second, the lebedevs, and particularly evgeny, were very proud of the work they raised, the money they raised for the gorbachev cancer foundation. they had gorbachev in the evening standard newsroom. putin despises gorbachev. he sees gorbachev as the man who helped collapse the soviet union, ending russia as a great power. so, i mean, it's a strange thing to have that kind of close relationship with gorbachev. now third, i would draw a distinction between the father and the son. the son always struck me as a bit of a hedonist. i mean, you know... well, i didn't go by the way, katie, ijust wanted to... neither did i, i'd like to say. i was not at pisa airport, seeing a very dishevelled foreign secretary who, for some reason, didn't want his security detail around. borisjohnson. but ijust think we need to be

careful about adopting a kind of mccarthyism attitude to all russians, and also understand that who else was going to buy it? do we have a fit and proper test? i mean, newspapers are not football clubs, but the lebedevs put in money and, from what i could tell — and i have had conversations because i bumped into geordie greg occasionally — he did not feel the heavy hand of evgeny lebedev on his shoulder when he was making big editorial decisions. and i have spoken to other editors who said that too. absolutely. that's the point. so again, i think it's you need to look very clearly. nowjust one other point about the intelligence services. the sunday times that has done great reporting made a big deal of the fact thatjohn sors, who was the boss of m16, had raised objections to evgeny lebedev attending the lunch with the editor. do you know something?

the fact i went to lunch at mi6 about once a year? i would never have dreamt of bringing the proprietor because you don't want you're a journalist. and i'm sure that sors, who i do know have not asked him, would have thought, well, who the hell am i? i'm the one who's making the decisions about who comes to my lunch. and i think that was why he didn't want evgeny lebedev in. not that he thought he was some kind of lord haw haw haw in disguise. right? well, i should say at this point, we did invite evgeny lebedev to join us on the programme today, but we've not heard back about our invitation. who you made a film for bbc newsnight back in 2012 when you accompanied mr lebedev to belarus for an interview with president lukashenko that mr lebedev had secured for the independent, i wondered what evgeny lebedev was like.

very polished and very underwhelming, i would say. he came across as a rich man's son. i didn't hang out with him. we had one meeting ahead of time and we didn't get we didn't start off very well because newsnight, he approached newsnight and it was very much part, i think, of his transformation from a party boy into a into a much more serious figure in in the british public life. so he approached newsnight with a suggestion for a collaboration, and they rang me up and said they would like to do a collaboration with lebedev, who had secured an incredible exclusive with europe's last dictator. the belarusian president. who did not do interviews at all. so my response to that was that it was completely inappropriate for, you know, i had no interest in doing a collaboration with lebedev because he was the son of a russian oligarch

and end of a kgb agent. i think it's very disputed whether there is such a thing as a former kgb agent, as you know, to quote vladimir putin himself, who once said in one of his famous press conferences, once a spy, always a spy, he said that to edward snowden. so whether or not that's the case, that's the father, not the son. we're talking about the son right now. absolutely. but at the same time, what was happening with the independent at the same time, he had just taken over, and it was very clear that it was about his reputational kind of, you know, him trying to come across as a different kind of figure. and i knew that he had gone to central african republic on a reporting trip, and here he was going on this reporting trip while also cutting jobs at the independent. let me just interrupt you just to say that it would be good to hear a clip from it, which we have here, a clip from mr lebedev talking about his expectations for the interview. i think one of the interesting things about this is i don't i i really have no idea how

it will go _ i i think it's the first one that. i've done where i really do not know what to expect, - but apparently, according to his press secretary, he's up for a fight. - and natalia, i mean, as you were saying earlier, he was the boss of the independent. he wasn't a journalist. i wondered what you made of him as an interviewer in that situation. terrible. he was terrible. it was a four hour interview. it lasted... it went on and on forever. he asked terrible questions. he also asked very weird questions. i mean, at some point he the most bizarre moment of the interview was when he turned to lukashenko and said, "what do you think about group sex"? bit early for that on the radio. there was a long, awkward pause on lukashenko, kind of gestured me and asked me to move into into the shot because the deal, the deal we were, we ended up as newsnight ended up doing a story about lebedev interviewing lukashenko rather than doing the story with lebedev.

so that's really important to emphasise, although i did not want me asking any questions... he had secured the interview. i suppose you were along for the ride to film the, you know, getting that, interview him, getting that interview, i suppose. so i think we will move on from there and move away from evgeny lebedev at this point. and back to that question that i asked at the start of the show about why it's only now that we're reading investigations into russian influence in the uk, and i'm thinking in particular about roman abramovich and what we're learning now. lionel barber, you know, you'll know from your time as editor of the ft about the legal perils of writing about the oligarchs. has the risk of litigation from london's top law firms suppressed reporting about them until now, do you think? well, i'm not carrying water for the ft, but i can assure you that we did write about russian influence in london, and i still have the letters from the law firms threatening us. and you know, this was literally boots hung up by my boots on saturday morning. and the reason you know this

was you seeing the names of the law firms in the house of lords when tom burgess and catherine belton were testifying just this week? but crucially, the problem is there's a very interesting question about the word of the use oligarch. some of these very, very rich people sent very, very tough letters insisting they were not oligarchs because this refers to the late 1990s we were hearing about earlier, where some people became very, very rich, very quickly, gaining control of natural resources in the 1990s when we basically had the wild west out in russia. now, some of them have since become great philanthropists. if you think of len blavatnik, he owns warner music, who makes very clear he's ukrainian. yeah. but the crucial point, the crucial point, katie, is some of the i think you've

got to distinguish between groups of oligarchs. some of them have become great philanthropists. they've given money, take nick friedman, some of them ukrainian. some of them own a football club like mr abramovich. he also happened to be a governor in a siberian province. he does give money to charity. he doesn't sponsor art museums. and then there are others who who are much darkerfigures. i've interviewed one of them in russian... mr seznchen, who controls rosneft. these are different categories of people. you mentioned, those journalists, catherine belton from reuters and tom burgess

at the fft were saying in the foreign affairs select committee this week, you know about the difficulty of publishing these stories. paul caruana galizia, tom burgess from the ft. he told the governments, you know that committee that london lawyers apply psychological pressure to journalists. do you recognise that? i do actually not on the lebedev story i should say, because he never threatened to sue, although i thought he might go there. and but in general, a lot of the most aggressive labour lawyers are centred on on london, and they target on london, and they target journalists, notjust in this country, this jurisdiction, but also overseas. so they've targeted maltese journalists, for example, acting on behalf of maltese politicians for claiming damages in england. and natalia antilla, you've tried to write i think about the children of oligarchs, but it wasn't easy. is that right? well, it's never yeah, it's never easy- with the oligarchs, i mean, - i, you know, suspect that there is a lawyer listening to this conversation as well. -

i mean, that's kathryn belton is a really great example - of the, you know, how hard it has been for her. _ i'm just going to change direction now because i want to pick up on something that we talked about a few weeks ago, which is the crackdown on russian backed tv channels and media in the uk and around the world. and as i introduce her at the beginning laura kially is tech correspondent at politico, based in paris. laura, it turns out that blocking russian news channels is not as simple as the eu would like. why not? well, first of all, it wasn't that easy legally, because it was a political decision to ban those media from the european soil. but it was unprecedented, so the first question that needed to be answered was what legal grounds do you use to forbid media organisations from broadcasting in europe? and of course, rt and sputnik are not your usual media organisation, but they do use journalists with actual press cards and press credentials. so what happened is that european leaders realise that media regulation was not

going to cut it to ban eu and to ban rt and sputnik, and that's how they decided to go through the economic economic sanctions route. but rt is actually challenging that in front of eu courts. so we will see whether that is legally solid or not. and does it mean, is that is the onus now on the tech companies to block rt voluntarily? i mean, they were in the scope of the sanctions. so the online online channels, telegram channels, youtube channels, facebook. all of that was in the scope, so they have removed them. it was legally binding for them to do so. but what we're seeing is what we call mirror websites, which are websites that copy the content of banned website, but with different urls, so it's harder to crack down on them and on fringe platforms such as 0dyssey, which is very well known among

anti—vax covid groups, you can still find rt on that on that website, lionel, just to bring you in right at the end, just for the last few seconds, you know, how successful do you think russian backed media has actually been influencing public opinion in the west? very little. i think a few people have got very rich. i've been not mentioning them on this programme by, by appearing on these shows and being essentially apologists or near that. but you know, just having an english reporter and english voice on rt which has a tiny audience i don't think is that influential. i do think that there was an important influence in other areas, particularly on brexit.

i'm going to have to stop you there because we have run out of time. thank you to all my guests. the media show will be back at the same time next week, but for now, thanks for watching and goodbye. hello again. on saturday, we recorded the highest temperature of the year so far in scotland in the highlands in kinlochewe. we got to 20.2 degrees celsius. a few spots in europe beat 20.2 degrees celsius. in portugal, for example, it was a couple of degrees warmer, but otherwise, it was one of the warmer places in europe, comfortably beating all of these cities. athens, just nine degrees through saturday afternoon. but it could've been worse. for anyone wanting a bit of warmth in turkey, saturday brought some snowfall, even into istanbul. now, our weather's been settled at the moment because we've got a big area of high pressure that'sjust to our east, and it's going to be dominating the weather through sunday and for most of next week as well. clear skies at the moment.

the wind slowly easing compared with what we've seen over the last 2a hours or so. it'll still be there with some patches of frost and a few mist and fog patches through the vale of york and eastern areas of scotland. but otherwise, a lovely start to the day, lots of spring sunshine on the cards, probably a nice sunrise in northern ireland. here, though, we'll start to see a little bit of thicker cloud working in from the west later on, and we'll see some cloud moving in across the east anglia threatening a few showers late in the afternoon. it is going to be a fine day for most of us, though, with some sunshine, but noticeably cooler. temperatures about 9—13, maybe a 15 locally in parts of scotland. and there'll be further showers running into eastern england, maybe even with a bit of soft hail into sunday evening. from there, though, the weather is going to get a lot, lot warmer. what will happen as we go through monday, this little curl of cloud, a very weak area of low pressure, could bring an odd shower into eastern scotland if it gets close enough. but otherwise, it's another mostly dry day with spells of sunshine.

notice those temperatures rising across england and wales — 13 in cardiff, 15 in london. still cool for scotland and northern ireland, but as these southerly winds continue to push northwards through tuesday and wednesday, those temperatures are going to surge significantly. so, tuesday, a fine day with some sunshine. isolated showers developing through the afternoon. most of you will have a dry day, though. and look at these temperatures, reaching a high of 19 degrees in london, of 15 in glasgow, 1a for belfast. and the fine weather with prolonged spells of spring sunshine for many of us will last for much of the week ahead, with temperatures warm for the time of year.

good morning. welcome to breakfast with chris mason and nina warhurst. 0ur headlines today the rising cost in lives of the war in ukraine. the un says at least 847 civilians have been killed so far. the true figure is likely to be much higher. amid claims from mariupol that russian forces have moved thousands residents to russia. ukraine's president zelensky condemns the destruction of the city. translation: of the city.- translation: of the city. translation: oftheci . ., ., , .,., peaceful translation: to do this to a peaceful city _ translation: to do this to a peaceful city that _ translation: to do this to a peaceful city that the - translation: to do this to a | peaceful city that the occupiers detoured as a terror and will be remembered for centuries to come. the situation is creating a child refugee almost every second, we report from the increasingly busy

border with romania. how a small village in oxfordshire has come together