questionnaire from police investigating lockdown parties at downing street and whitehall. in paris, french police fire tear gas at demonstrators it s after a convoy carrying protesters against coronavirus restrictions made it into the capital. doctors say thousands more lives could be saved by paying attention to earlier symptoms of heart attacks a new campaign to spot the signs is launched by nhs england. more headlines at 5pm. now on bbc news, it s time for the media show. hello. some big topics on the media show today. in the west, it s reported as the ukraine crisis 100,000 russian troops assembled near the border. president macron is on a whirlwind diplomatic mission this week to avert a conflict. but i want to look at how the situation is being reported in russia and in ukraine.
and lots of reputable outlets publishing reports citing anonymous intelligence sources in the us and the uk, which the journalists aren t verifying. and they re asking, well, how can we trust this any more then we re trusting what our own government s telling us? and just going back to that giant negotiating table, you spotted that putin was using the informal when addressing macron. which some see as being his way of signalling to russian viewers that they re friends and that russia isn t some sort of pariah. how do you read it? well, in russian, there are two ways of addressing someone. te, which is less formal, and ve, which is more formal. and some of the listeners might remember our correspondent here, steve rosenberg, was on a while ago, talking about his interview with alexander lukashenko, the leader of belarus, who used the less formal address for steve. and steve took this as almost belittlement, an attempt to insult him. i think what putin was doing with macron was slightl
time for the media show. hello. some big topics on the media show today. in the west, it s reported as the ukraine crisis 100,000 russian troops assembled near the border. president macron is on a whirlwind diplomatic mission this week to avert a conflict. but i want to look at how the situation is being reported in russia and in ukraine. is there the same sense of urgency in domestic media? how are both sides using the media to advance their own objectives? francis scarr is in moscow with bbc monitoring and he s going to help us do that. francis, on a lighter note first, you ll have seen those images of putin and macron sat at either end of it gigantic negotiating table this week. is this a table the kremlin rolls out for photo opportunities when they want to see the idea through the media that the west should sit at a distance from russia, or are all the tables like that? as you say, katie, plenty
how do you read it? in russian, there are two ways of addressing someone. this formal and informal. some of our listeners may recall steve rosenberg talking about his interview with alexander lukashenko the leader of belarus who used a less formal address for steve. and steve took this as almost belittlement in an attempt to insult him. i think what putin was doing with macron is slightly different here. he was trying to say that i am part of the club of nations, among the high table of global politics was up and this of course is a really big statement from bruton because russia has been kicked out of organisations like the g8 which is now the g7.
of political commentators have been saying that this was about political projection, about putin making macron feel uncomfortable while they were talking. but actually, in the last couple of weeks, he s also held talks with the president of iran and the prime minister of hungary, both of whose country arguably enjoy better relations with russia than france does. was he still using that table? yeah, at the very same table. in fact, lots of other people are saying this is more about putin s weariness over coronavirus. just to give you another example, back in december he held his marathon annual press conference, and any journalist who wanted to attend the event had to pass three pcr tests and, once they got to the venue, they had to go through a kind of disinfection tunnel which sprayed them with sanitiser. and when they eventually got into the hall they were a good 20 metres away from the russian president anyway. 0k, more from you, francis, in a moment. we ll bare that in mind.