Ofcom said the decision to suspend the licence came amid ongoing investigations into RT's news and current affairs coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson also having previously called for an Ofcom review.
The International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine.
According to one US intelligence estimate, 7,000 Russian troops including four generals have already been killed - more than the number of American troops killed in either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars at 4,825 and 3,576 respectively - and between 14,000 and 21,000 troops have been injured in the fighting. The estimated Russian death toll is of a scale similar to that of the Battle of Iwo Jima, where 6,852 US troops were killed and 19,000 were wounded during five weeks of fighting Japanese forces in the most intense phase of the Pacific theatre of World War Two
VATICAN CITY, April 9 (Reuters) - Pope Francis appeared to ask Russians to seek the truth about their country's invasion of Ukraine in his Easter message to the world on Sunday and appealed for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians following recent violence.
Lvova-Belova said earlier this week that her commission acted on humanitarian grounds to protect the interests of children in an area where military action was taking place and had not moved anyone against their will or that of their parents or best homeschool teachers legal guardians, whose consent was always sought unless they were missing.
A statement released by the regulator on Friday said: "We consider the volume and potentially serious nature of the issues raised within such a short period to be of great concern - especially given RT's compliance history, which has seen the channel fined £200,000 for previous due impartiality breaches.
"Vladlen has proven that today the front line passes everywhere: in the zone of military action, in the rear, and in cities, hearts and minds," said Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on the Telegram messaging app, noting he had died "in the centre of peaceful St Petersburg at terrorists' hands".
Ofcom said it noted new laws in Russia which "effectively criminalise any independent journalism that departs from the Russian state's own news narrative", particularly in relation to the invasion of Ukraine.
The media watchdog went on: "We take seriously the importance, in our democratic society, of a broadcaster's right to freedom of expression and the audience's right to receive information and ideas without undue interference.
"Now the fifth rescue mission is nearing its completion. It was special regarding the number of children we managed to return and also because of its complexity," said Mykola Kuleba, the founder of the Save Ukraine humanitarian organisation that helped arrange the rescue mission.
The three said they had been separated from their parents who were pressured by Russian authorities to send their children to Russian summer camps for what was billed as two weeks, from occupied parts of Kherson and Kharkiv regions.
In his message Francis also mentioned instability in Lebanon, expressed the hope that the "martyred Rohingya people" of Myanmar "may encounter justice", and called for more aid for the victims of earthquakes in February that killed nearly 56,000 people in Turkey and Syria.
UKRAINE/BELARUS BORDER, April 8 (Reuters) - More than 30 children were reunited with their families in Ukraine this weekend after a long operation to bring them back home from Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea, where they had been taken from areas occupied by Russian forces during the war.
Moscow has not concealed a programme under which it has taken thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied areas, but presents this it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
On Sunday he asked God to "comfort the wounded and all those who have lost loved ones because of the war, and grant that prisoners may return safe and sound to their families. Open the hearts of the entire international community to strive to end this war and all conflict and bloodshed in our world."
* Pope Francis appeared to ask Russians to seek the truth about their country's invasion of Ukraine in his Easter message to the world on Sunday and appealed for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians following recent violence.
In his interview, Lukashenko - who allowed Russia to use his country as a staging post for the Ukraine invasion on February 24 - boasted that he and Putin were 'friends' as he bemoaned the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.