Russia-Ukraine live updates: Fate of 1,300 unknown inside Mariupol theater; aircraft facility struck in Lviv

Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, announced Friday it was revoking the license of Russian state-funded channel RT since it does not consider its licensee, ANO TV Novosti, “fit and proper to hold a UK broadcast license.”

In a statement, Ofcom said that the decision comes amid 29 ongoing investigations into the impartiality of news coverage by RT of the Ukraine invasion. The ongoing investigations, along with the fact that the TV channel had been fined before for similar breaches, led the U.K. regulator to start a separate investigation to determine whether RT is fit to retain its license.

This broader investigation took into account that RT is funded by Russia, which invaded Ukraine, and that Moscow has recently passed laws that criminalize independent journalism that veers off the Russian government’s narrative, particularly on the Ukraine invasion. “We consider that given these constraints it appears impossible for RT to comply with the due impartiality rules of our Broadcasting Code in the circumstances,” the Ofcom statement reads.

RT was off-air already in Great Britain because of sanctions imposed by the European Union.

The news channel objected to the media regulator’s move. RT’s deputy editor in chief, Anna Belkina, told Reuters that “Ofcom has shown the UK public, and the regulatory community internationally, that despite a well-constructed facade of independence, it is nothing more than a tool of government, bending to its media-suppressing will.”

At 1 p.m. Eastern on Friday, Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan and Robert Mahoney, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, are going to be discussing the dangerous challenges reporters are up against in Russia and Ukraine.

Russian reporters have seen their independent news organizations shut down or suspend operations, and many journalists have been forced to flee the country. The New York Times temporarily removed its reporting staff from Russia, and many other news organizations have curtailed their reporting from inside the country.

In Ukraine, Pierre Zakrzewski, a cameraman for Fox News, was killed Monday alongside a Ukrainian colleague, Oleksandra Kuvshynova, while reporting outside Kyiv, the capital. Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who was with them, was seriously injured. Just days before, American journalist Brent Renaud, who was working for Time Studios, was fatally shot, also outside Kyiv.

What questions do you have about reporting in Ukraine or the Kremlin’s crackdown on Russian media outlets? Send in your questions here.

Russia called its second meeting in a week of the U.N. Security Council to accuse the United States of conducting a biological weapons program in Ukraine. Presenting documents he said were obtained during Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya produced what he described as contracts and work orders signed by the Pentagon’s Defense Risk Reduction Agency to conduct research he said was largely hidden from Ukrainian officials.

Special attention was given, he said, to viruses that could easily spread in both Ukraine and Russia, including Crimean hemorrhagic fever and hantavirus, as well as viruses transmitted by bats, including coronavirus. Ukrainian scientists at facilities around the country, he said, were “not informed of the risk of transfer” of the viruses and were “kept in the dark” as to the “real objectives” of the work.

In a briefing to the Security Council, Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations’ high representative for disarmament affairs, repeated her comments at the last meeting, saying that “the U.N. is not aware of any such violations” of international treaties against biological or chemical weapons.

Fact checker: How the right embraced disinformation about ‘U.S. bioweapons labs’ in Ukraine

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that “there are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories — not near Russia’s border, not anywhere. There are only public health facilities, proudly supported and recognized by the U.S. government, the World Health Organization and other governments and international institutions.”

It is Russia that has used biological and chemical weapons in past violations of international law, Thomas-Greenfield said. Russia’s ongoing “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories” were a “sign of its desperation,” she said.

A number of other members charged that Russia was wasting the council’s time. If Russia has concerns, they said, it should implement an immediate cease-fire and troop withdrawal and follow existing protocols for international investigation of its charges inside Ukraine.

The operator of hundreds of Burger King locations in Russia has “refused” to close them down, stymying the restaurant operator’s attempts to leave the country.

Restaurant Brands International, the Toronto-based entity behind Burger King, Tim Horton’s and other fast food chains, owns just 15 percent of Russia’s Burger King joint venture. The rest is controlled by a group of investors led by Alexander Kolobov, a Russian businessman who is responsible for day-to-day management of the roughly 800 Burger King locations there.

David Shear, RBI’s international president, said in a letter to employees Thursday that the company had contacted Kolobov to demand that all Russian Burger Kings cease operations and that Kolobov had refused. It has proved difficult to withdraw from the complicated web of business agreements the company established there 10 years ago, he said.

Burger King’s experience illustrates the difficulty many corporations face when trying to extricate themselves from decades-old investments. Consumers watching the horrific humanitarian toll of Russia’s assault on its neighbor have registered their disapproval of those businesses remaining in Russia, vowing boycotts on social media.

Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, surveys the damage to a residential neighborhood after it was hit by a rocket strike early in the morning, in a video posted to his Twitter page on Friday. The strike, which left a large crater near a preschool, resulted in at least one casualty, and left 19 others injured — including four children — according to the mayor.

“These are the consequences,” the mayor states. “The situation is horrible here.”

Videos of the aftermath, which have been verified by The Washington Post, show firefighters and soldiers providing aid, while people sifted through the rubble, attempting to salvage belongings from their homes. The preschool is seen heavily damaged, with shattered windows and sections of the roof collapsed. A large crater is visible nearby in an open area surrounded by apartment buildings, all of which show severe damage. Smoke rises from many of the apartments and entire building walls have collapsed to rubble.

The State Emergency Service of Ukraine posted on Facebook Friday that the strike happened around 8 a.m. within Kyiv’s Podilskyi district.

Thousands of flag-waving Russians crammed into Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium — the arena used for the final of the 2018 FIFA soccer world cup — in a triumphal celebration Friday of the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

President Vladimir Putin broke from his recent image as a remote figure at the end of a very long table, to stride about the stage extolling the war against Ukraine as testament to Russia’s “Christian values.”

Wearing a cream polo neck sweater and navy jacket, he said Russia took military action to stop “neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists” in Ukraine committing “genocide.” He has frequently repeated this claim to try to justify the invasion, without producing evidence.

But his speech was abruptly cut midsentence in what was later described by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as a technical problem.

As Russian forces attacked Kyiv and blockaded civilians in Mariupol, the annual Crimea celebration was part of a massive propaganda effort to unite Russians behind the war and isolate opponents, who are branded traitors and “fifth columnists” by authorities.

“It is to get people out of their misery, out of this genocide, that is the main reason, the motive and purpose of the military operation that we began in Donbas and Ukraine,” Putin said. “And this is where the words from the Scriptures come to my mind: There is no greater love than if someone gives his soul for his friends.”

Putin said Russian soldiers were “fighting shoulder to shoulder” supporting and covering one another and upholding Christian values. “We haven't had such unity for a long time,” he said.

As usual some of the attendees were state employees ordered to attend.

“We are forced to go to all such events. We can’t say no. It’s out of the question,” said a Moscow social worker, Lena, who declined to give her full name for fear of losing her job. “I hate this whole thing, and I am very afraid. They told us that if we don’t go it’s going to be very strict this time. No explanations will be accepted. We would be fired right away.”

Four countries announced Friday that they are expelling 20 Russian diplomats in total, according to their respective foreign ministries.

Bulgaria is kicking out 10 diplomats in an unprecedented move for a country that has deep traditional ties with Russia, underscoring the Kremlin’s falling-out with European countries following the invasion of Ukraine.

The diplomats were declared personae non grata on Friday for “carrying out activities incompatible with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It did not disclose the names of the diplomats but said they had 72 hours to leave the country.

Bulgaria, a NATO and European Union member, has long sought to integrate more deeply into these alliances while keeping up good relationships with the Kremlin. But Russia’s actions in Ukraine have shifted that position. In early March, Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said his country is no longer “soft” on Russia and doesn’t only do “balancing acts.”

“I think nobody in Europe is protected at this point, both from what’s going to happen next — we don’t know what Putin is doing anymore,” the prime minister said. He added that Bulgaria still has red lines when it comes to a full-fledged NATO response to the invasion, stopping short of supplying weapons, for example.

“We’re too close to the conflict to be able to do that,” Petkov said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is scheduled Friday to visit Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, where he is expected to ask officials to step up aid for Ukraine.

Three Baltic states — Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania — also expelled 10 Russian diplomats on Friday.

They were ordered to leave in a coordinated move “in connection with activities that are contrary to their diplomatic status and taking into account ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine,” Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said in a tweet.