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

Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, announced Friday that 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.”

The Russian Embassy in London issued a similar statement, saying that the embassy considered “the investigation and the decision of Ofcom to be absolutely politicized, biased and far-fetched.”

The statement continues, saying that if Ofcom “is truly concerned with the amount of complaints against the Russian media outlet,” it should also thoroughly investigate “numerous complaints against UK state-sponsored media, for example, the BBC and, possibly, look into revoking its license as well. Otherwise, the decision only argues in favor of UK hypocrisy.”

Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.

U.S. stocks erased early losses Friday and were on track to notch a fourth consecutive day of gains as traders kept wary watch on Ukraine.

Markets had been buoyed this week by hopes of a possible cease-fire ― the Dow Jones industrial average is up more than 4.5 percent since last week ― but Russia continued its assault. By early afternoon Friday, the blue chip index was trading up 65 points, or 0.2 percent, after having opened in negative terrain. The broader S&P 500 index added 0.6 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq jumped 1.4 percent.

Oil prices climbed, with Brent crude, the international benchmark, trading near $108 a barrel. The U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, was hovering near $105 per barrel. Prices have retreated from recent surges that sent them beyond $130.

The Ukraine war has weighed heavily on energy markets because Russia produces about 10 percent of the world’s oil supply, on par with the United States and Saudi Arabia. Surging energy costs tend to ripple quickly through the economy, adding heat to already high inflation and sticker shock at the gas pump. As of Friday, the U.S. average for a gallon of gas was $4.27, according to data from AAA. That’s a 4-cent drop since Monday but still nearly 75 cents more than a month ago and $1.39 higher than last year.

Heidi Levine has been photographing the Russian invasion in Ukraine for The Washington Post.

This morning, Levine filed these scenes in the aftermath of yet another bombing in the country’s capital. Her work continues to underscore the grave consequences of war and its heart-rending effects.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) was “wrong” to label Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “thug” and that Putin is the real danger to the Ukrainian people.

“Madison is wrong,” McCarthy said Friday during a news briefing. “If there’s any thug in this world, it’s Putin.”

Cawthorn recently called Zelensky a “thug” and said the Ukrainian government is “incredibly evil” — remarks that are at odds with the views of most U.S. lawmakers in the Republican and Democratic parties, who have expressed their support for Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion of that country.

“Remember that Zelensky is a thug,” Cawthorn told supporters at a recent event in North Carolina, according to video published Thursday by Raleigh-based TV station WRAL. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt, and it is incredibly evil, and it has been pushing woke ideologies.”

McCarthy pointed to the Russian military’s recent acts against Ukraine as proof of Putin’s thuggery. He noted that the Russian military has bombed Ukrainian maternity wards and inflicted great harm on children under the direction of Putin.

“This is atrocious,” McCarthy added. “This is wrong. This is the aggressor. This is the one that needs to end this war. This is the one that everybody should unite against.”

While McCarthy spoke out about a need for unity in support of Ukraine, he said he was unconcerned about the “small” number of Republican lawmakers voting against Ukraine aid or sanctions against Russia.

Eight House Republicans on Thursday voted against a bill to strip Russia and its ally Belarus of key trade preferences and expand presidential authority to impose human rights sanctions. Last week, more than 30 Republican senators voted against a $1.5 trillion spending bill to fund government agencies that also included $13.6 billion of assistance for Ukraine.

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.