LiveNow, a Fox TV stations news service, has apologized to Ukrainian officials for its 'unintentional mistake" of misidentifying its capital city of Kyiv as a Russian city.
During its Easter broadcast, LiveNOW was showing church services from around the world, including mass from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv.
According to United24 Media, the broadcast at first captioned the service "Easter Service: Kyiv, Ukraine" before it changed to "Easter Service: Kyiv, Russia." The error remained for 20 minutes before it was corrected, according to the outlet.
"If this was a mistake rather than a deliberate political statement, there should be an apology and an investigation into who made the mistake," Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi wrote in a post to X on Easter Sunday.
LiveNOW was simultaneously showing Russian President Vladimir Putin attending Easter service late Saturday at Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour led by Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and outspoken supporter of Putin's war efforts against Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy referred to the coverage in a post on Telegram. Despite Putin's declaration of an Easter ceasefire, Ukrainian forces reported 59 instances of Russian shelling and five assaults by units along the frontline as well as dozens of drone strikes, Zelenskyy said.
"It is worth not broadcasting services from Moscow, but putting pressure on Moscow to actually implement a complete ceasefire and maintain it for at least 30 days after Easter, to give diplomacy a chance," Zelenskyy said in the post, according to Euromaidan's translation.
LiveNOW issued an apology for the error:
LiveNOW made an unintentional mistake Saturday evening during extensive live coverage of Easter services from around the world. The error occurred during the transitioning between global live events and was corrected and acknowledged on-air. We regret and apologize for the mistake.