Ukrainian police during the investigation of the murder of Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli and Russian translator Andriy Mironov in Donbas (May 2014) received evidence of the innocence of the Ukrainian National Guard Vitaliy Markiv, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has said and called on the Italian court to take this evidence into account.

"We want to give a signal of our full readiness to cooperate with Italian law enforcement officers .... We call on the Italian court to take into account our evidence," Avakov said at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday.

He noted that the investigation "established a number of witnesses who give testimony ... conducted a series of examinations and investigative experiments, which gave a convincing result - the non-involvement of the Ukrainian serviceman Markiv in the murder of Rocchelli.

National Guard member Markiv, who has dual citizenship of Ukraine and Italy, was detained in Italy on June 30, 2017 on suspicion of murdering Rocchelli near Slovyansk, Donetsk region in May 2014.