Vitaliy Markiv, a Ukrainian soldier who fought off Russian-backed militants in 2014, was convicted of killing two journalists in the Donbas and sentenced to 24 years of jail by an Italian court. But it was physically impossible for him to do so, says Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk, who co-authored a documentary investigating who really killed the two journalists, examining evidence that the court didn't care about. Now she is under attack by Italian and Russian media - and it is not surprising, given that the verdict is laden with Russian propaganda. We republish her Twitter thread here.
No investigation on the scene in Ukraine was done. The case was based on circumstantial evidence with no direct proof of his involvement.
Fauci in court didn’t recall that Markiv told him anything about his - or the Ukrainian military - role in the death of journalists. He testified that Markiv only told him not to approach the area because it was dangerous.
Markiv case update. Prosecution presents same tedious arguments despite new evidence[/boxright] It was said that there was no war situation at the time of Rocchelli’s and Mironov's death, while the Mironov video points to the opposite. The same messages, completely distorting the real situation in Sloviansk in 2014, are being repeated by the prosecution in the appeals court in Milan. The appeal hearings started in late September and the verdict is due in early November. For more than a year, our team - me and Italian journalists Danilo Elia, Cristiano Tinazzi, Ruben Lagattolla, have been working on our own investigation of what happened to our colleagues. We went to the scene on Sloviansk three times, created a digital map of the terrain with a drone, made visibility and arms range tests. We found two other survivors of that attack, never heard by the court. We spoke to a dozen of international journalists who were in Sloviansk at the time.
WATCH THE TRAILER OF THE DOCUMENTARY HERE
- there was no visibility from Markiv’s position;
- the shots heard in Roguelon video came from close by, i.e. there was a crossfire;
- Markiv was physically unable to target and reach journalists with his Ak-74.
Markiv case: International task group exposes glaring legal errors in Italian court hearings[/boxright] The only thing we were unable to do is to interview the other side: prosecutors, Rocchelli's family, their lawyer, key witnesses Roguelon, Morani and Fauci, representatives of two Italian press organizations who joined the case as civil plaintiffs against the state of Ukraine. All of them ignored our interview requests or refused to be interviewed, sometimes explicitly saying that they don’t like our investigation. Now, they accuse us of being one-sided. The coverage of the first-grade trial in the Italian media was extremely one-sided, with Markiv called "a killer" since the day of his arrest in 2017 and the position of his defense never quoted. Recently, that has been changing, in part due to our investigation. We presented a short version of our documentary in September in Italy and Ukraine, and are currently finishing the full version. [boxright]
Italian podcast & report on Ukrainian soldier Vitaliy Markiv ignore basic facts & evidence[/boxright] We are all experienced journalists who value our reputation and financed the documentary via three crowdfunding campaigns and a grant from the Justice for Journalists Foundation. Markiv’s defendants have asked the court to consider the short version of our documentary as new evidence. No decision has been made yet. The prosecution unfoundedly accused us of not being independent. Rocchelli’s family lawyer also said our investigation is an offense to his memory. We are also coming under attack from the media. Russian propaganda TV Russia1 made a defaming story about our documentary. Recently, an article against the documentary, written by a former Italian mercenary in Donbas who fought on the separatist side, was published by a pro-authoritarian website Contropiano. Strikingly, it was later shared by Articolo 21, a website affiliated with the Italian press federation, a civil plaintiff in Markiv’s case. Our work is unprecedented: neither investigators nor other journalists have done such complex research. The attempts to discredit and censor our work are unacceptable. Especially if they come from the same people who in court pledge to defend the freedom of speech. in memory of the deceased journalists, chose to attack other journalists, us, and our investigative work aimed at finding the truth about their death. [hr] Note. The documentary was originally called "In the wrong place." After the publication of this thread, it was renamed into "Crossfire."
