Here's more from our news desk on that controversial court verdict in Italy:
Ukrainian Soldier Given 24 Years For Role In Deadly Shelling Of Journalists In Donbas
An Italian court has sentenced Ukrainian National Guardsman Vitaliy Markiv to 24 years in prison for his role in the deaths of an Italian photojournalist and his translator during fighting near the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk in 2014.
A court in Pavia on July 12 found Markiv, a dual Ukrainian-Italian citizen, guilty of complicity in premeditated murder in the deaths of Andrea Rochelli and his Russian translator, Andrei Mironov, Ukraine's Hromadske TV reported from the courtroom.
Rochelli and Mironov were working in the Donetsk region when they were hit by mortar shelling by the Ukrainian military just weeks after fighting broke out between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatist formations in parts of eastern Ukraine.
Markiv was arrested in Bologna in June 2017, and his trial on murder charges began one year ago.
The prosecution based its case on the testimonies of a French journalist who was injured in the May 24, 2014, incident, and an Italian journalist who quoted Markiv discussing the shelling.
While Markiv was not accused of committing the killings himself, but of informing the Ukrainian National Guard of the presence of the group.
That message was relayed to the Ukrainian armed forces, which opened fire on the group.
Prosecutors reportedly requested a sentence of only 17 years.
The defense argued that the group was working in a war zone without protective armor and were not identified as members of the press.
Markiv's lawyers demanded he be released for lack of evidence.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov posted on Twitter that the "unfair and shameful" decision would be appealed.
Avakov wrote that Markiv has "become [a] victim of an aggressive Russia which unleashed in [Slovyansk] a war on [Donbas]."
According to the United Nations, some 13,000 people have been killed, a quarter of them civilians, and as many as 30,000 wounded in the war in eastern Ukraine since it broke out in April 2014.
Based on reporting by Hromadske TV and Interfax.
Here's more on the G7 statement from our news desk:
G7 Ambassadors Criticize Ukrainian President's Lustration Initiative
The Group of Seven countries' ambassadors to Ukraine have expressed caution about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's proposal to lustrate Ukrainian officials who held office after the Maidan uprising in 2014.
In a statement posted on Twitter on July 12, the ambassadors said that "electoral change and political rotation are the norm in democracies."
"Indiscriminate bans on all participants in executive and legislative governance are not," they continued, adding that "the situation in Ukraine today is, in our conviction, not comparable to that after the Revolution of Dignity."
The Revolution of Dignity refers to the 2014 uprising that drove pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from power.
On July 11, Zelenskiy proposed expanding Ukraine's law on lustration to include everyone who held a government post between February 21, 2014, and May 19, 2019.
The current law was aimed at preventing those who held office under Yanukovych from continuing to do so.
Zelenskiy said he daily wonders what to do with state officials – "either to exchange them for prisoners or put them in the substandard bulletproof vests that they bought and send them to the front lines" of the war against Russia-backed separatist formations in parts of eastern Ukraine.
Former President Petro Poroshenko said the proposal was "Russian revanchism."
He said the purpose of Zelenskiy's initiative was to remove "those who defended Ukraine" to "clear space for a fifth column."