a warning, his report contains some distressing images. this is bbc news, the headlines: volodymyr zelensky�*s criticised eu countries that continue to buy russian oil saying they're are aiding the country's attack on ukraine. the bbc had an exclusive interview with the ukrainian president inside his war bunker, in which he urged western leaders to speed up the delivery of weapons to ukraine. russia says a warship that was damaged by an explosion on wednesday has sunk. it said moskva, the flagship of russia's black sea fleet, was being towed to port when stormy seas caused it to sink. ukraine say they hit the warship with missiles. a former british national

who joined the islamic state group in syria, has been found guilty of involvement in a series of beheadings, by a court in the us. el shafee el—sheikh was part of an is militant cell nicknamed the beatles by hostages because of their british accents. now on bbc news: jassa ahluwalia has mixed indian and english heritage, and he looks white. he goes on a journey to explore his identity to try and answer his question: am i english? my name is jassa ahluwalia and i'm actor, writer and film maker. do you want to come to a party tonight? i've been in things like some girls for bbc three, unforgotten on itv, peaky blinders. birmingham wasjust the bait. why are you telling us this?

strange, isn't it? having, like, an actualfull on landmark that is part of ourfamily? you had blonde hair, and then in i walked, indian guy with dark hair, and everybody's thinking, what's going on here? i snapped. my mixed heritage mixing in a tube. somebody did shout out, "0h, random white guy," or whatever, and somebody next to me shouted out, "he's mixed." that felt so good. i'm both and punjabi and british. but am i english?

i was born and bred in the midlands. i was born in coventry, grew up in leicester, it has been a huge part of my upbringing. home — where is home? i feel a sense of home in lots of different places. the midlands feels like home, and i think london is becoming my home because of necessity and work. yeah, i've not taken to him. is that the line? don't ask him over. oh, yeah. i have been performing since i can remember and before i can remember. when i started out performing wasjust, i mean, it wasjust sort of fun to be the centre of attention as a kid. i think it's something i, as the eldest son of my generation, growing up, surrounded by a lot of my indian family and my punjabi grandparents, i was sort of used to being the centre of attention a little bit. but, you know, that was short lived as it sort of became more

of a passion, more of a career prospect. the kind that claws at your belly. when i first got into performance, i wasn't looking to change the world, change people's minds or anything like that. it was just fun. it was just really, really fun. well, more than that, it's that's penetrated through, like, seven layers. you haven't even got seven layers. it's notjust in my epidermis. viva, it's in my dermis. i've been in things like some girls for bbc three, unforgotten on itv. i played a victorian cockney lad in ripper street. and a soviet spy in peaky blinders. five russians are planning to rob an armoured car from a factory in birmingham. we know about the robbery. i've done a few plays, a couple of films. i thought you was trying to hit on me there. people saw themselves reflected in some girls... in yourdreams! ..in a way that they hadn't before, and ifelt the impact of that. i mean, there's greater responsibility. it can be fun, but it can also

be really impactful as well. i snapped. it's essentially about how all of us have a form of mixed identity. all of a sudden i shouted out, "mummy, i want a banana." all identity is mixed. identity is something that is constantly evolving and changing, identity is a process and it is specific. you know, we morph our identities and change them according to whatever situation we're in, it's all very much dependent on context. so the book that i'm writing, it's called both not half, sort of based on my ted talk. both not half, for me, is the articulation of my mixed heritage. it's what allowed me to feel

like i could have full ownership of myself. it felt like it came out of nowhere. my first video of me speaking punjabi, this little skit that i'd, done had gone viral. people were really confused about who i was, what i was, was i lip synching? or was it somehow some clever editing? and i was reading through some of the comments and people were just very confused. the comments were like, "oh, he's half punjabi." i guess because i'd shared these videos as part of this attempt to push back and claim greater ownership of myself, seeing "half" written down there just felt so diminishing. and that's when i saw it and i was like, "no, i'm not half, i'm both." that's what this is about. and that's when both not half began.

and as soon as i articulated that i felt this weightjust lift off me. i suddenly knew what it was about, and i had just been fed this binary way of looking at the world since i was a kid, because i'd always been, you know, it's like half this, half that. i'm half english or i'm half white. i'm half indian. and, yeah, both not half was me rejecting that saying, "i'm going to be different." so i guess the question i'm really asking myself is why do i hesitate to call myself english? is it because of my mixed heritage or is it...? i don't know, something deeper than that? this is myjourney to figure out, am my english? leicester, when i was growing up, just always felt — the word i would use now is diverse.

i always felt like i needed to almost escape leicester in order to pursue a career in the arts. i'm realising more in my adult life how much this place has shaped me. we're coming onto the street now, this is where i grew up. my grandparents�* house, my dad's place. everything was very punjabi at home, and then i'd go to school, speak english and do all of that stuff. but, yeah, i was sort of, i grew up in a punjabi household. hey. hello. come in. i was born in a little village,

called dhaliwal, in the punjab. my father's village. you just caught me in the middle of making a cake. i'm an indian guy. i quite like the fact that you could be known as a british indian, as opposed to anything else. if you want to chop up some apples for me, that would be great. in some ways, i often feel like i share a lot of the experiences that my dad did as a first generation immigrant, despite the fact that i was born here. how's your other projects going? yeah, the book's going well. it's all about like national identity, and i was actually quite curious to know what your thoughts were on some of it, because i feel like maybe my experiences have been quite different. virtually from when you were born you had blonde hair. and then in i walked, this guy, this indian guy with dark hair, and everybody�*s thinking, "what's going on here?" "can he really be the dad?"

yeah. when i came over, i still regarded myself as indian because of the way we were living and the language and so on. later on, i probably thought, "well, i'm more sort of like a british indian, rather than english english," because there always seemed to be somebody telling me that i'm not english. right. for me, learning punjabi growing up made it much easier for me to feel connected to the punjabi part of myself in my life. growing up in leicester, there was a sizeable south asian presence. you didn't actually have as many sort of run—ins with overt racism until your late teens, early adult life. what was the effect? what did it feel like? well, itjust felt, "ok, now i know that, you know, i am not english english. "no matter what i do, how eloquently, fluently i speak english, you know,

i'm not going to be english." it's really interesting that my dad identifies very specifically as british indian. because that's not how i feel, but i totally understand. he's of the generation that really had to fight for survival. do you think it's easier for me to be or feel english because i do look white? it's easier for you to pass off as english english than it would be for me because, like you said, there is a difference between us. it never ceases to shock me or still surprise me how moving it is talking to my dad and hearing about my grandad's experiences, and when my grandparents were alive, talking to them about their experiences. you know, i wasn't there, and when i hear them talk about it, i still feel it. you know grandad had a situation where he was at a teachers meeting and one of the governors turned round and said, "well,

the problem with you lot is you don't want to integrate." yeah. and my dad looked at him and he said, "look, you know what? there's a group of people in this country, they dress the same, they eat the same food, they pray to the same god, they celebrate the same customs. and yet, they are the most discriminated against, they are the blacks, the afro caribbeans, you know, where did integration get them? where did integration get them? so that's when you realise that no matter what, it's not the colour of your passport, it's the colour of your skin. you know, on a day to day basis, i don't think we really think about our identity, as such, but it's there and it runs deep, because as soon as you start having these conversations, there's strong emotion there, and i think that's why it's important. just being able to say that i am british indian is enough for me because i am a product of india and i feel really,

really comfortable with the fact that i'm in both cultures, i can celebrate both cultures. i'm looking to foster a new way of being able to belong as part of a wider society, and i think what this journey is revealing to me is that is a process that we absolutely, all of us, have to engage with. i genuinely don't know how ifeel about doing this. i've been considered mixed race for so long, like. race and ethnicity have not been things that i have clung onto as part of my identity. something ifind quite interesting is that the word anglo—saxon is itself a hyphenated word. we have a mixed heritage history, so, you know, really, when we're talking about mixed heritage identities in the uk, it's reallyjust a case of how far back

you want to go. "finding new family members can be exciting, but you might also discover unexpected relatives, which could surprise you and your family." that's sort of part of the risk of the rolling of the dice, i guess. you know, i think i'm just as curious as anybody else about family history, where we come from. it doesn't necessarily mean anything, because, you know, my dad's from punjab, and he's been to cuba and he was mistaken for cuban. i guess i can now spit in a tube. the activation tube. that was so gross. i replaced the funnel with the cap. my mixed heritage mixing in a tube. this goes in. that's done.

just need to post it off, and then my history awaits me. i have a sister, ramanique, who's also an actor, writer, and film maker. what's quite interesting is that we look quite different. it's a bit chilly. when a lot of people see us, theyjust think we look very different. she's got, i guess, more punjabi, darkerfeatures. oh, wow, that's the old... the old library. that was the library, yeah. he looks a certain way, so he has privileges that a lot of people who don't look like him don't have. he sort of has to be aware of that, while also advocating for that other part of himself that is unseen and for the people that look different or, you know, are brown skinned

or darker skinned. raminique and i have had quite different experiences because of our different appearance, and i don't think either of us were really aware of them growing up, but having these conversations about our sense of identity and our adult life has really revealed some of these things. do you think of leicester as like home to you? yeah, i think leicester has really become our hometown in our adult life, but when we were growing up it was much more, you know, grandad and biji's house, that was home. definitely losing our grandparents, having that connection removed from our elders definitely meant, "ok now i really have to define things for myself." i really miss my grandparents. i don't think i was even three years old when i started living with them. the immersion i had in punjabi and sikh culture was because of them. so weird seeing it empty. i know.

i feel like we gained so much from being able to develop that beautiful strong bond with our grandparents, especially our indian grandparents, because we're living in england and we're surrounded by western culture, so to have that foundation and be able to form those strong roots and connections to our indian culture was just invaluable. our grandparents were literally next door to us. it's an empowering thing, what he is doing, because he is forming a new definition of what english is to him. it does feel a bit weird coming in here with biji not being there, like her throne. he's been incredibly influential as to how i look at myself for my identity and how i define who i am. i now and throughout the last few years of biji's life, i definitely felt like a real urgency in myself to learn the language. i mean, you can speak

punjabi, like, so fluently. my punjabi is good, but it is kind of broken. there was no expectation for me to engage with the culture, i think because of how i looked. so whenever i spoke, i'd get a lot of positive reinforcement. it was just the, "well done, you're speaking, you're trying. wonderful, wonderful." it was less so for you, and i think a lot for our south asian friends as well, they talk about, you know, feeling really embarrassed speaking because they'd make mistakes, people would laugh at them, and so it became more difficult. i think this is a way for him to be able to explore his culture publicly and to be able to kind of put his culture at the forefront of his work in a way that he is not currently, in the stories that are being told on tv and in film, able to.

it's strange, but i never felt like we were particularly different. i never thought of us as looking different. yeah. do you think because of your whiteness, you've had to learn about racism, rather than... ? is it strange for you being a part of a culture that is subjected to racism? i feel it. like, really viscerally. it feels horrible. and then sort of not really knowing what authority do i have — what's my position in the conversation? it is slightly disconcerting. i think what's been really nice is to be really encouraged by my peers to get involved with the race equality committee, with equity. and there was a thing at a bafta event where there was a big photo of a lot of black, south asian, east asian actors. malachi kirby came over and grabbed me to include me in the photo.

sorry. it felt like such a big moment. malachi really got how i was feeling in that moment. ifelt like i belonged there. but i also knew that to volunteer myself to be in that photo would just raise so many questions. i mean, somebody even did shout out something like, "0h random white guy", or whatever. and somebody next to me shouted out, "he's mixed." yeah. that felt... it felt so good. when my grandparents died, it was like the passing of a flame. it was about understanding where they came from, the experiences that had shaped them, what they had given us, and then how i can continue that.

because of the rotunda, i've always felt like a part of me belongs in birmingham. yeah. dad always intended it to be the centre of birmingham. the pin in the middle. exactly. and he just had this vision. as an architect and a young man growing up in birmingham, he was very anchored to his city. during the war, doing fire watch on the top of the clock tower at birmingham, and watching the devastation during the second world war. i think he very much wanted to be part of the rebuild of birmingham. it's such a symbol of birmingham, isn't it? it's strange, having, like, an actual full—on landmark that is so a part of our family. yeah.

shall we go check it out? it's going to be so fun! so this is what would have been grandpa's office? ithink, yeah, this side of the building. wow. oh, wow. oh, my goodness. wow. to come here today and actually visit the building, go up and see the views, the same views that my mum saw when she was a kid, and share that with her is really special. this must be so weird. aw! to actually take him into a space that for 18 years of my life had always been a strong influence and somewhere where his grandpa had been, i hadn't expected to be affected emotionally like

i was, it was quite a shock. when you stand up here, you really notice how central you are to birmingham. it's all spread around you. like a watchtower. yeah. as a landmark, it sort of creates and generates a sense of belonging, which i definitely feel being connected to its history, it makes me feel really proud. i feel really proud standing here. i don't know what newspaper — birmingham planet? 1963. yeah, 1963. "the men who build a new city." that's dad when he was 41. he always looked, like, 70. he did, didn't he? like, that'sjust sort of how i remember him. so, this is called 21 stories. yeah, it's got all these different stories from different people who were involved, like scaffolders. that is amazing, like, all the people connected to it. mrsingh.

davinder bansal — associate director. the last photo in the book is a singh. i kept that one as a little bit of a surprise was for you. to discover that this building, which had been so much a part of our family through my mum's side, has then been given new life through someone of sikh heritage just feels... ..incredible. itjust totally blew me away. wow! yeah, full circle — literally. there's a sort of mixedness to the building. yeah. that's amazing. from grandpa to a davinder. yeah. that's really cool. wow. i've never been here before, but i feel like i'm coming back.

because of that connection through time, i have a real sense of belonging, just being here. it's really wonderful. we are, as a nation, we are british asian, and i am british asian, and that's the way i've tallied it. the problem is, the dominant narrative of my lifetime and probably yours too in the media has been that immigrants arrived here uninvited with no connection to the culture, and took advantage of british hospitality. that's why the struggles you're going through with your identity feel problematic, when, actually, they should feel joyful. they are just a reflection of your home nation's history, right? yeah. as we struggle with our british asian identities, i think that struggle has been made harder because our nation doesn't face up to his own british asian identity. it doesn't acknowledge the asians who fought in both world wars, the indians

that help build the nhs. so i think you doing your work helps people face up to our multi—racial history. at the beginning of this journey i was asking myself the question — am i english? eight weeks ago i did that dna test, and i had an email with the results. there are a few quirky bits here and there, but nothing too crazy, and it's not offered me any greater insight into who i am. itjust makes me realise how much race is a social construct. it's about the environment you are in and what people are conditioned to think of as what a certain person should look like. and that's interesting for me because i feel incredibly punjabi, but i don't look like what most people think a punjabi looks like. i think what i've really come to realise is that being english is no longer about subscribing to some outdated idea. it's about engaging

with an ongoing living process, and we're all a part of that. the job of a patriot is to foster belonging, and, in that sense, ifeel very proud to be english. hello there. the weather this easter�*s looking pretty decent across much of the country. could see a little bit of rain

pushing into the far north and west of the uk as we head through easter sunday into easter monday. good friday fine and dry. coastal areas of the irish seacoast most places will be dry. top temperature is 20 to 20 degrees in the south—east, mid to high teens for many. friday night, it many showers die away, missed and met developing across many central and southern and western areas. most areas mild clear skies on the south and east. saturday, many places dry and warm in the afternoon.

welcome to bbc news. i'm chris rogers. our top stories: on our exclusive visit to volodymyr zelensky�*s war bunker: ukraine's president tells the bbc continuing russian attacks are narrowing the chance for a peace deal. bucha is in this process, closing this possibility. bucha is in this process, closing these possibilities — bucha, borodyanka, mariupol. so i don't have — you know, it's not about me, it's more about russia. russia says the flagship of its black sea fleet has sunk after an explosion. ukraine claims it hit the moskva with missiles. a british man whojoined the islamic state group in syria is convicted in the us over the beheading of six

westerners.