UPDATE 1-Ukrainian fighter found guilty over killing of Italian photographer

An Italian court sentenced a Ukrainian man to 24 years in jail on Friday over his role in the 2014 killing of an Italian photographer covering fighting between pro-Russian forces and Ukrainian troops.

Journalist Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian colleague Andrey Mironov were killed after they were hit by mortar fire near the town of Slaviansk in eastern Ukraine five years ago.

Italian prosecutors in the northern city of Pavia said Vitaliy Markiv, a volunteer fighter with the Ukrainian forces at the time, had taken part in the deadly attack and accused him of being an accessory to murder.

The prosecution had requested a 17-year sentence for Markiv but the judge ignored this and imposed a much tougher term.

Markiv holds joint Ukrainian-Italian citizenship and was arrested after he flew back to Italy in 2017 to see his mother.

He has denied the charges. "Glory to Ukraine," he shouted after the verdict was read out.

Under Italian law, a defendant has the right to two appeals before a sentence becomes definitive.

Ukrainian Interior Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov said the verdict was unfair and would be appealed.

"Our guardsman and Ukraine are not guilty of the death of Rocchelli. He has become the victim of an aggressive Russia which unleashed in Sloviansk a war on Donbass (region). We will continue fighting", Avakov posted on his Facebook.

The office of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a statement he had asked the Foreign Ministry and the General Prosecutor’s Office "to make every effort" to bring Markiv home.

[True, but considering how the Nazi’s viewed Slavs, it’s still unbelievable that they could support that scum.]

It’s not that simple. As an occupied people whose Russian masters had killed millions of them during the Holodomor, their principal enemy was Russia. The kind of mass killings carried out by the Nazis wasn’t unique and was a feature of the Russian Civil War, during which both sides employed collective punishment against their opponents. While we have records of what leading Nazis really thought from the archives retrieved after their surrender, these records weren’t available to Ukrainians. The Nazis took care not to tell their charges of their long-term plans, in much the same way as kidnappers who abduct their captives don’t tell them beforehand that they will be killed once the ransom is paid.

They celebrate those of their people who fought the Soviets alongside the Nazis, not because they were Nazis (because as Ukrainians, they couldn’t ever be), but because they fought the Russians. Ukrainians fought the Russians as Germany’s allies but alliances of convenience like that are pretty much the historical pattern. The French and the British fought the Russians during the Crimean War because they did not want an already gargantuan Russia conquering all of the Turkish empire, not because they were great friends with the Turks. A Russia that included all of the Turkish empire might be too big for both Britain and France to resist, as it encroached on their territory.

We fought Germany as Russia’s ally during WWII not because we were great friends with the Russians, but because we viewed the Germans as the more dangerous enemy. In fact, without Russia’s alliance with Germany, during which they divided up Poland, arranged a peace treaty (broken when Germany invaded Russia) and made arrangements for supplying Germany during its invasion of France, WWII might never have occurred. But we jumped in anyway, because either Russia or Germany was going to win, and whoever won would monopolize continental Europe, without American intervention. The same dynamic was at work here in terms of the US interest re fighting in Europe - a Germany that included the rest of Europe and Russia or a Russia that included all of Europe would be too big and powerful to resist.

In Asia, key figures worked for Imperial Japan, with Indonesia’s, Singapore’s, Taiwan’s, South Korea’s and Burma’s postwar leaders all having served in the Japanese government bureaucracy or military during their occupation of the Far East. They all had their own agendas and while their nations were occupied, the occupying power was the only game in town. Note that most of the Continental Army’s military leaders had fought for the Crown in the French and Indian War. The idea that Ukrainians should be ashamed of having worked with the Nazis is a little off-kilter - they worked with them in an area where they had a common interest - the eviction of Russians from their ancestral lands. The Russians weren’t exactly angels when it came to suppressing native unrest during their territorial conquests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_and_Ingush
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_conquest_of_Siberia#Indigenous_population_loss

The principal difference between Russia and the US is that Russia’s “Indians” were weak powers to the East that hadn’t progressed much beyond the bow and arrow age, whereas Russia had mastered Renaissance-era improvements in weaponry and tactics to sweep all before them in much the same way the Mongols had, in an earlier age, fought their way to Moscow.

“” “” The principal difference between Russia and the US is that Russia’s “Indians” were weak powers to the East that hadn’t progressed much beyond the bow and arrow age, whereas Russia had mastered Renaissance-era improvements in weaponry and tactics to sweep all before them in much the same way the Mongols had, in an earlier age, fought their way to Moscow.”” “”

And the difference is? Did American natives have nuclear weapons and colonists sticks and stones?

For your information Circassians and Crimea Tatars played on side of Ottomans. Do you believe Ottomans were positive influence in Eastern Europe? On top of that they were raiders and slavers looting that is now Ukraine on a routine basis. Reducing their profile has eliminated the problem.
As for Chechen and Ingush they were brutal raiders as well. They were also a great obstacle in Russian efforts to relief Armenia and Georgia from Ottoman and Irianian threat.
As for Siberians they weren’t that peaceful back in time. There were still remnants of Mongol Empire at the time although it mostly threatened China and Russia to a much lesser extent.

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