this is bbc news. the latest headlines: ukraine says continued russian shelling is still stopping rescue workers reaching the theatre in mariupol which was targeted last wednesday. they say hundreds of people are trapped in the theatre�*s bomb shelter. there are reports that food and water shortages in the city mean that children are starving to death. ukraine says its troops have managed to stop russian soldiers advancing on the port city of odesa. heavy fighting is continuing in many parts of the country. united nations head antonio guterres has appealed for an end to the war, warning it's becoming more unpredictable by the hour. the us has condemned what it called russia's orchestration of a sham trial

against the kremlin critic, alexei navalny. his prison sentence was extended to nine years after he was found guilty of fraud and contempt of court. he's widely regarded as the country's most prominent opposition figure. a very good wednesday morning to you. now on bbc news, it's time for 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 guest today. they are, paul caruana galizia, who is a journalist behind a new podcast for tortoise media called lebedev: lord of siberia. adam bienkov is political editor at the byline times. laura kayali 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 to 2020. he is now an investor in the new european. and, lionel, just 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, he might — 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 there, 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 assassination of sergei skripal, which he dismissed, mr putin. asa as a story worth not much. to the 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 idea, he said it was obsolete. he really felt the west was in decline, decadent, preoccupied by secondary questions of genderfluidity. and he also said that his risk appetite had gone up, basically,

"because he who does not dare to risk," quoting a russian proverb, "does not get to drink russian champagne." do you recognise the man you see now, do you think he has changed? i see him a lot puffier, by the way. he looks to have put on a bit more weight. the effects of two yea rs' isolation during covid has got to have had some effect. i think the circle has gotten narrower and i can exclusively reveal that when we sat down with him at the kremlin, the table was a bit shorter than the one he is currently using. i was going to say you were not at the end of a very long table. it was the same room, though. with all of the great russian historicalfigures. let's start closer to home. in the sunday times this weekend, they ran a question. there was a question about why evgeny lebedev seems to have such good access

to borisjohnson. paul, you've explored this question too. take us back to the beginning. in 2009, the russian businessman and former kgb agent alexander lebedev bought the paperfor £1. and then a year later, they bought another one. tell us a little bit more about that. so, we release the podcasts on the monday before the sunday times followed it up, and it was commissioned in december. back then, we thought it will be a colourful profile of evgeny lebedev and his father, and how they use the newspapers and how they use it to build friendships with celebrities. and politicians as well like borisjohnson. it was a kind of — almost like an influence machine that they ran

with these newspapers. and through the parties. but of course, the reporting change character in february when russia invaded ukraine. so we started looking more closely at other aspects of the lebvedev's when it when it comes to the owning of these newspapers. lebedev senior owned media bids in russia. as in some other oligarchs. is that more than just a business decision and how did you read the way they bought into the british media? sure. it is much more than a business decision. so, as a kind of strategy survival for oligarchs, you need a lot more than wealth. you need some way of buying influence and promoting yourself as a liberal or western—leaning figure. that's what a lot of oligarchs did.

in russia, alexander bought a large chunk of a paper with gorbachev. and he also bought a smaller tabloid. there is some irony in that — that tabloid, in 2008, reported allegations that a putin was having an affair with a young gymnast, and in a few days, the tablet was shut down. it was in a couple of weeks of that that alexander and his son started the process of purchasing the newspapers in the uk. the then owner of the newspaper was looking to off—load it because it was a losing enterprise. i think it's also significant that the deal was set up by another newspaper editor. they went on to edit the

newspaper. it's a story about how closely bound up a lot of these people are with the oligarchy. let me bring in adam now because he published a big piece on saturday called the johnson—lebedev letters. what did you find? i first became aware of the relationship between them about ten years ago in 2012, when i spotted on the mayor of london's gift register that they declared a trip to italy paid for by lebedev. i thought it was a curious thing at the time. it had not been announced in any way. i started to ask questions about it, but it was not really picked up by anyone else at the time, even when later it appeared that this was an annual enterprise. he kept being sent out there and several years after that when we learned about his trip in 2018 when he ditched his security detail and attended this party. it was not picked up by many

other news organisations and i was interested in it and did some freedom of information act request. i just wanted to see what the relationship was between borisjohnson and lebedev. and i obtained all of the correspondence from their time. it follows on from what paul was saying, it kind of gives you the nuts and bolts of how this influence operation works, and it works both ways. by buying the evening standard, that is the only paper covering the mayor election, and so for borisjohnson, he needs to have a good relationship with lebedev. and it talked about the pet projects that he would be thrilled to have lebedev�*s support for. it also works the other way.

the purpose of the festival is to transform russia's global perceptions in london. what's interesting is that lebedev, in these minutes, it suggests he's going to reach out to the kremlin 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 am not a security risk to this country, "which i love. "my father a long time ago was a foreign intelligent "officer of the kgb, but i am not some agent of russia." he obviously adds as well, "i have called on president putin "to end the invasion of the country, ukraine, "in the most public way possible."

paul, i wanted to bring you in because mr lebedev is now a peer sitting in the house of lords. he was deemed a security risk in the vetting process, and borisjohnson ignored that. you are trying to find out exactly what happened. we know that, really, just a few weeks within borisjohnson being elected prime minister in december 2019, he decided to make lebedev a member of the house of lords, it was a personal nomination. we know, through documents we got that the house of lords appointments commission, the semi—independent board that can that but not veto nominees was chasing lebedev for information or information that is routinely ask of nominees. the difference in his case is that they turned to the security

services for advice. it was only on march 17 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, will you please reconsider or would you "consider an alternative?" which they proposed. and he did indeed end up becoming a peer. that is right, he became a peer. two days after that report was discussed, evgeny met with boris johnson in downing street. a few days after that, borisjohnson pushed his name through, so evgeny took his seat later that year. lionel, let me bring you in here. you would have watched

the entrance into the lebedevs into high society — what did you make of it at the time, and what do you think about it now? i had lunch with evgeny when he asked me about what he should be doing, both as a proprietor as well as with the evening standard. i also met the father in moscow in 2008 on a trip where he was very much the man injeans with the very expensive leather shoes. nothing wrong with that, but you could feel ex kgb. but we need to be clear about a few things here, and i do not want to discredit the reporting, first of all, proprietors, that is what they do. they want to ingratiate themselves with the establishment and they often get things like knighthoods and various honours. and prime ministers use patronage. johnson is appalling in this respect _ i am not surprised that he he

wanted to give him a peerage. but first of all, lebedevs were very proud of the money they raised for the cancer foundation. they had gorbachev in the evening standard newsroom. putin despises gorbachev. he sees him as the man who helped collapse the soviet union, ending russia's power. i would draw a distinction between the father and the son. the son always struck me as a bit of a hedonist. i didn't go to the parties. neither did i! i...i just think that we need to be careful about adopting

a kind of mccarthy—est attitude towards all russians and also understand that, who was going to buy it? do we have a fit and proper test? — newspapers are not football clubs. the lebedevs put in money and, from what i could tell, and i have had conversations, 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 have said the same. that is the point. again, i think we need to look very clearly. just one other point about the intelligence services — the sunday times has done great reporting, made a big deal of the fact that the boss of m16 had raised objections to evgeny lebedev attending the lunch with the editor.

i went to lunches at m16, mi5 once a year. i would never have dreamt of bringing the proprieter. i'm the one who is making the decisions about who comes to my lunch, and i think that was why he did not want evgeny lebedev. not that he thought he was some kind of... we should say that we invited evgeny lebedev to join us on the programme, but we have not heard back. but someone who has worked with him is natalia. you made of film for bbc news night back in 2012. mr lebedev had secured an interview. what was he like? he was 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. we didn't start off very well because he approached newsnight and it was very much part of his transformation of a party boy into a much more serious figure in the british public life. he approached newsnight with a suggestion for a collaboration and they called me up and asked if i wanted to do a collaboration who had secured a incredible interview with the belarusian president. who doesn't normally do interviews. i thought it was... i had no desired to do a collaboration with evgeny lebedev. he was the son of a russian oligarch, and a kgb agent. it

is disputed,. to quote vladimir putin. he once said in once of his famous press conferences, he said once a spy always a spy. whether or not that is the case, that was the father not the son and we are talking about the son. evgeny lebedev had just taken over the newspaper and it was very clear about his reputation, him trying to come across as a different kind of figure and i knew that he had gone to africa on various reporting trips and also cutting jobs at the independent. it will be good to hear a clip from it. we're going to hear about his expectations for the interview. one interesting thing about this is i don't know how it is going to go. i think it's the first one that

i have done where i really do not know what to expect. apparently according to his press secretary he is up for a fight. as you were saying, he was the boss of the independent not a journalist. i wonder what you made of him as a interviewer in that situation. he was terrible, he was terrible! it was a 11—hour interview. it went on and on forever, he asked terrible questions and very weird questions. there was a bizarre moment in the interview when he turned to lukashenko and said, what do you think about group sex? and lukashenko looked at me and i had to kind of move in. there was a long awkward pause. he gestured for me to move on. and move away from evgeny lebedev and back

to the question that i asked at the star of the show why is it only now that we are reading investigations into russian influence into the uk and i'm thinking particularly about roman abramovich. lionel barber, you will know about the legal perils of writing about oligarchs. has the risk of litigation from london's top law forms suppressed reporting about them until now? i am not carrying water for the the financial times, but i can assure you that we did write about influence of russians in the uk and i still have letters from the law firms threatening us. this was literally putin's...

hung up by my boots on saturday morning. we've seen the names of the law firms. we heard this and the testimony just this week. crucially, the problem is, this is a very interesting question about the word oligarchs. some of these very rich people sent a very tough letters insisting they were not oligarchs because this refers to the late 1990s 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. some of them have since become great philanthropists. len blavatnik he owns warner music.

the crucial point is some of... i think you've got to distinguish between groups of oligarchs. some have become great philanthropists. they've given money. freedman, some of them own a football club like mr abramovich. he also happened to be a governor and a siberian province. he does give money to charity. he does not sponsor art museums. there are others who are much darkerfigures. and i interviewed one of them in russian. these are different categories of people. bottom line, the law is not in favour of investigating, on libel risk. this is what was being said in the foreign select committee this week. the difficulty of publishing the stories.

the government was told that the london lawyers apply psychological pressure to journalists. do you recognise that? i do, actually. not on the level of some others because i was never threatened. but in general a lot of the most aggressive libel lawyers are sent on london and they targetjournalists not just in this country, in this jurisdiction, but overseas. maltese journalists. a people from india on behalf of president modi for example. yes, it is never easy with the oligarchs. i suspect that there is a lawyer listening to this conversation as well.

catherine belton is a great example of how hard it has been for her~ — i'm just going to change direction now because i want to pick up on something we talked about a few weeks ago which is the crackdown on russian media channels. laura is a tech correspondent at politico based in paris. it turns out blocking russian backed channels is not as simple as the eu hoped for. why not? it was not very easy because it was a political decision. 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, itn and sputnki these are not your normal media organisations, but they use journalists with actual press cards and press credentials.

so what happened is european leaders realised that the media framework was not going to cut it. and so they went the economic sanctions route. but itn is challenging in front of eu courts. and we will see if that is legally solid or not. is the onus on the companies to block these channels? they were in the scope of the sanctions, so the online channels and telegram channels, youtube, facebook, all of that was in the scope, so they have been removed. it was legally binding for them to do so. but we are seeing mirror websites which are websites that copy banned websites, show the same information

but with different urls. and on fringe platforms like 0dyssey, well—known covid—19 conspiracy groups. you can still find rt on a website that has a very fringe conspiracy theory type content. how successful do you think russian media has been at influencing opinion in the west. , i think a few people have got very rich, but i will not mention them on this programme. they appear on these kinds of shows as kind of apologists. having an english reporter, an english voice on rt which has a tiny audience i don't think is that influential. i do think there was important influence in other areas particularly on brexit. and in america... i'm sorry i'm going to have to stop you there. because we have run out of time. thank you to all of our guests.

the media show will be back at the same time next week. for now, thank you for watching. goodbye. hello there. at this time of year, warm days are often followed by decidedly chilly nights. and tuesday was certainly a warm day, with temperatures in northwest wales getting close to 21 degrees, the warmest day of the year so far. plenty of other places not too far behind. but as soon as the sun went down, the temperatures followed. it has been turning quite chilly out there. high pressure still close by on wednesday. it stays mostly dry, but with those clear skies overhead, quite a chilly start to the morning, with temperatures down around freezing, below freezing in a few places. one or two early fog patches around as well. they should tend to lift and clear by the middle part of the morning. and then it is another beautiful spring day,

with lengthy spells of sunshine. the vast majority will stay dry. there's just a small chance of one or two showers popping up in northeast scotland and maybe across eastern counties of england. not as breezy as it was on tuesday across western areas and every bit as warm. top temperatures between 16 and 20, maybe 21 degrees. but as we head through wednesday night, again, the sun goes down, the orange colours drain away from the map, replaced by blues and greens, with temperatures again dropping down to around freezing. those are the values for the towns and the cities. out in the countryside, i think there will be a touch of frost, and again potentially some fog patches on thursday morning. now, england and wales will once again have a mostly sunny day, with just the odd rogue shower. for scotland and northern ireland, expect more cloud creeping in from the northwest, with some spots of light rain and drizzle. top temperatures through thursday between 16 and 19 degrees in most places. now, for friday, again, the further north you are, there will be a bit more in the way of cloud. some rain for the northern isles.

further south, more in the way of sunshine, a bit more of a breeze through the english channel at this stage, and temperatures maybe down just a fraction but still getting up to between 15 and 19 degrees. and then we head into weekend, and some of that cloud in the north associated with a weak frontal system will try to work a little further southwards, but high pressure continues to hold firm, so despite that extra cloud and the greater chance of a bit of fog, it is going to stay fine and dry with some spells of sunshine. into next week, though, we develop a northerly wind. it'll start to feel quite a lot colder and there could even be some wintry showers.

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm rich preston. our top stories: yelling. as ukrainian troops are said to be reclaiming lost ground, we report from the small town facing the might of the russian forces and pushing them back. this war is only a few weeks old and the russians will almost certainly be back with more soldiers and a lot more firepower. nothing left but the ruins: ukraine says russian airstrikes are turning the besieged port of mariupol to dust. survivors tell of children starving to death. the leading kremlin critic facing yet more jail time —

the us says it's part of russia's crackdown