Rally with demand release Ukrainian serviceman Vitaly Markiv in outside the Italian embassy in Kiev

Ukrainian activists hold a poster with a portrait of Ukrainian serviceman Vitaly Markiv during a protest with demand of his release, outside the embassy of Italy in Kiev, Ukraine, on 12 July, 2019. On 12 July 2019 an Italian court in Pavia sentenced a Ukrainian former national guard commander Vitaly Markiv to 24 years in prison for the murder of a photographer and his translator in the early days of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Vitaly Markiv was on trial for the killing of Italian photographer Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian assistant Andrei Mironov in May 2014, the first media deaths in the war between government forces and pro-Russian separatists. Vitaliy Markiv was arrested in Italy on June 30, 2017 in suspicion of murdering an Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli in the eastern Ukraine conflict zone near Slavyansk on May 2014. Journalist Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian translator were killed and a French photographer was seriously wounded during a mortar attack in 2014.