Andrea Rocchelli:a former ukrainian soldier says his commander ordered him to shoot

Interviewed by Rai News 24 for the Spotlight programme, he said that he was on Karachun hill and was on lookout when the photojournalist was killed

OSSIGENO February 8th 2022 – A former Ukrainian soldier, interviewed by the Rai News 24 program “Spotlight”, stated that on May 24th 2014 the order to shoot against Andrea Rocchelli and the other journalists who were with him in Sloviansk in the Donbass would have been given personally by the commander of the 95th Brigade, Mikhailo Zabrodskij.

The ex-soldier who made this revelation served in the 95th Brigade and that day was on the hill from which, according to the Italian judiciary, the Ak74 and mortar shots originated that killed Andy and Andrei and seriously injured the French photojournalist William Roguelon. On the Karachun hill, he was on duty as a lookout. His position was exactly in front of the place where Andy and Andrei were killed. The former soldier agreed to meet with the Spotlight crew and recounted what happened that day.

The military, he said, used a Vasilek automatic mortar, which can fire four rounds in automatic mode in quick succession. William Roguelon, a survivor of the attack, described several times during the hearings of the first degree trial in Pavia, the hiss of mortar shells that fell in rapid succession around him.
The Spotlightvideo also features an interview with Mikhailo Zabrodskij. The former commander, now a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament and a member of the group for inter-parliamentary relations with the Italian Republic, while rejecting all charges, declared that he could not deny either the reconstructions confirmed bythe Italian justice system or the words of the witnesses. He admitted that all the forces present on Karachun Hill – including the men of the National Guard – were under his command.
The interview was broadcast on February 4th2022 in the programme “The discipline of silence, an investigation into the deaths of Andy Rocchelli and Andrei Mironov” as a result of the investigative work of the “Spotlight” journalists.

On the 24thMay 2014, the Pavia photojournalist Andy Rocchelli was killed together with human rights activist Andrei Mironov while documenting the startling conditions of civilians involved in the clashes between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian military forces.
GB