Russian Propaganda as Judge and Jury

In a week when the GOP Senate will likely take their criminal president and crown him criminal king, we look at the big picture – treason, disinformation, and how to resist. Much like the Senate trial itself, our conversation centers on Ukraine. This week Andrea interviews Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk about how disinformation makes its way from the Kremlin into western media and even into western courts, as demonstrated by a recent court case in Italy in which online Kremlin propaganda formed much of the “evidence”. This situation can happen anywhere, including here in the United States. Andrea and Olga also discuss censorship, state violence, and the difficulties in being a journalist in an era where multiple regimes seek to annihilate the very concept of truth.

Chief Justice: Thank you Counsel.

Senator Warren: Mr. Chief Justice?

Chief Justice: Senator from Massachusetts.

Senator Warren: Mr. Chief Justice, I sent a question to the desk. Thank you.

Chief Justice: Question from Senator Warren is for the House managers. At a time when large majorities of Americans have lost faith in government, does the fact that the Chief Justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court and the Constitution?

Sarah Kendzior: I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the bestselling essay collection, The View from Flyover Country and the upcoming book, Hiding in Plain Sight.

Andrea Chalupa: I'm Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker, and the writer and producer of the upcoming journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones.

Sarah Kendzior: This is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the Trump Administration and rising autocracy around the world. Later in the show today, we'll run an interview with Olga Tokariuk, a journalist from Ukraine who covers Kremlin disinformation propaganda and how it seeps into foreign media culture. This problem is not going to go away. As we said on this show many times before, Ukraine is a testing ground for Kremlin experiments, whether election hacking, social media information Wars, including not only troll and bot farms, but the infiltration of mainstream news outlets and hacking a vital infrastructure. The connection between corrupt governments in the West and Kremlin propaganda is also direct as we’ve seen in the work of Putin's operative, Paul Manafort, and his replacement, Rudy Giuliani, in Ukraine, which has now culminated in the Senate sham impeachment trial. We're recording this Monday morning at the point where the GOP has voted to not allow witnesses, but it's not yet voted to acquit the criminal president and therefore crown him criminal king. Andrea, do you have thoughts on this?

Andrea Chalupa: Do I ever. Well, lots of thoughts. I want to talk about this show that I just started watching, which I highly recommend. It's called Succession. It's by HBO. The reason why I started watching it is because in reading about the fires in Australia that killed over a billion animals and dozens of people, the cause of which you know was predicted in an investigation into how climate change was going to worsen fires in Australia and so forth, science that was largely ignored by parties, political leaders in Australia. Now, here we are.

Andrea Chalupa: That set off for me a deep dive into a propaganda empire and that is Rupert Murdoch's empire. Murdoch was the son of a major racist who believed in eugenics, which is pseudoscience, the fake science that tries to justify white supremacy and so forth. Murdoch was heavily influenced by his father, went on to building off his father's legacy, built a massive propaganda empire starting in Australia, the UK and the US. What he basically did was he trampled on the laws meant to hold the power of media accountable and contained any sort of potential abuse of power media. Murdoch trampled over those laws and rewarded the Far Right politicians from Thatcher and Reagan who turned the other way–looked the other way with his trampling of those laws. That's how he built an empire.

Andrea Chalupa: I was thinking a lot about that show, Succession, in preparing for this episode because there's a great line where the Rupert Murdoch character played by Brian Cox, who is advising his children who play the horrible poster children of why nepotism is so dangerous. This is the Murdoch family personified. It's a wonderful dark comedy on what it must be like to be in that den of vipers of the Murdoch family. The character that's supposed to be Rupert Murdoch’s character tells his daughter, "Why are you going into politics? It's the media that feeds the horse. Politics is what comes out from the other side of the horse." He nails it. He absolutely nails it.

Andrea Chalupa: If you look at my film, Mr. Jones, it's exactly that. Media is a force of power. Wherever power exists, there exists the abuse of power. You have to speak truth to power, whether it's the media or governor elsewhere. Media, as we've seen through Rupert Murdoch, as we've seen in what we're going to be going over today, and Kremlin disinformation, media, abusive power and media, corruption of media, it can change the world to the point where a government in Australia gets to the point where it ignores the science for so long that over a billion animals are burned alive. The abuse of power, the propaganda, muddles the facts so grossly that you can't even have an honest science-driven conversation on what to do about that and how to prevent it from ever happening again.

Andrea Chalupa: Here we are in the jaws of the beast of Murdoch's propaganda empire and Kremlin and Putin's propaganda empire. That's really what today's episode is about. If you look at why Donald Trump was able to steal the Presidential election and why the Republicans have fallen into line with Donald Trump, from Mitch McConnell to Lindsey Graham and others, it's simply because they were always meant for each other. They share the same values.

Andrea Chalupa: The Republican Party in America today was born from Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire. Brexit was born from Rupert Murdoch's propaganda empire. It's no wonder the Conservatives in America, the Conservatives in the UK, are largely aligned today with Putin's propaganda empire. These guys share the same values. They do not stand for journalism. They do not stand for facts. They do not stand for science. They do not stand for empathy. They do not stand for public service. They stand for power for the sake of power and making a ton of money, a ton of money, which will allow them to live above any accountability. There's even a line in Succession where somebody in Rupert Murdoch's den of vipers says that, "How great it is to be rich because you can get away with anything and not have to deal with accountability." That's it. That's the name of the game.

Andrea Chalupa: To people who are coming from a very different set of values, they have a difficult time just grasping the simplicity of that, because why would anybody be so crass and heartless? Well guess what. They are. The people with decency can continue speaking in their language of decency, but understand that when you're trying to deal with the forces we're up against, we are talking about two very different languages. It's up to us now who stand for science, who stand for facts, who stand for empathy to at least understand the language that the enemy is speaking with. That is power for power's sake, corruption to avoid accountability and more money than you could ever possibly imagine, unimaginable global-garchy wealth. That's what they want. Even if it comes down to burning down the planet.

Sarah Kendzior: I was going to say that this has always been the case. You can see operators like Murdoch beginning these machinations and merging with other oligarchs, other operators around the world going all the way back to the 1980s and the 1990s. A couple of things that change there that allowed this to be possible was the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in Media in 1987, which on the show we've noted many times, it was a very significant year for Trump and his relationship with the Kremlin and for this growing alliance of oligarchs and mafiosos and politicians and unfortunately people within our own government agencies followed by the founding of Fox News in 1996. All of this has been in play for a long time.

Sarah Kendzior: Another issue that rose to the fore in the late 1980s was climate change. I just feel like I hallucinated this. I remember being a little kid in the 1980s and everyone being so freaked out about climate change and about the impending doom of our Earth and basically about all the things that have come to transpire now, the worst case scenarios, things like Australia burning to the ground. I remember them talking about the hole in the ozone layer and about acid rain and about these being plot points on little TV shows for kids that I was watching. Kids being given in school that book, A Hundred Things You can do as a Kid to Save the Earth. McDonald's getting rid of the styrofoam for the McBLT, R.I.P. McBLT.

Sarah Kendzior: Anyway, it was this thing, it was thought of as such an urgent crisis. Of course, it never went away as that. We've seen movement, both within environmentalists, but more broadly, various accords that were supposed to stave off the worst aspects of climate change. We had Al Gore with all of his warnings. What's interesting to me is that this little cabal of people, like Murdoch and Trump and Putin, who have been aligned through various networks for now about 40 years, their networks thrived during this time where climate change was very rapidly getting worse. Their response to it was to always accelerate it, to exploit it, to root for it, to want the world to collapse and burn so that they could scoop up what remains. I've said this on the show before ...

Andrea Chalupa: And so they can commit genocide against people of color. Look at what ...

Sarah Kendzior: Yes, yes. That's what I was going to say is a depopulated Earth is easier for them to manage. They have a hierarchy. As you mentioned, Rupert Murdoch is a eugenicist. We've seen eugenesist arguments appearing over and over again in places like the New York Times, mainstream outlets. We've seen them in other countries as well. They have populations that they want to get rid of. I think that this is just one more mechanism of doing so. But go on with what you were saying.

Andrea Chalupa: We should note that we're recording this show on Monday, February 3rd, because I had accepted an invitation to go to London very last minute. A very dear old friend of mine by the name of Andre Maximovich, a Ukrainian who lives in London and works on development projects for Ukraine. He organized a screening of my film, Mr. Jones, in London, which quickly sold out. I mean I think it's free, but several hundred people are going to be there. It's at capacity at the moment. I was trying not to go, because I am very busy here with the show and everything. I couldn't say no to Andre, because he was there at the very start of this journey. I wanted to share that with you so you get a sense of where my optimism comes from and the fact that I believe firmly in my heart that ultimately we will be okay. That is going to be determined by our level of engagement and our refusal to look away.

Andrea Chalupa: My story with Mr. Jones began in my final years of college researching this as a curiosity. The story of my film was inspired by my grandfather who lived through Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, which killed millions of people in the Soviet Union, the vast majority Ukrainians. It was a deliberate, man-made famine. They sealed the borders of Ukraine, refused to let journalists in. My research focused on this real life, young Welsh journalist who was able to sneak into Ukraine, report on the famine directly and then came out and said, "There was a man-made famine killing millions." This was a shocking story. He was ultimately killed in mysterious circumstances, research strongly suggests by the Soviet Secret Police. Even though he's killed and his story is covered up largely with the help of Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Moscow Bureau Chief of the New York Times and other leading voices in media showing that again, corruption in the media, this young man, his name is Gareth Jones, his truth lives on. Now we have a film about him.

Andrea Chalupa: I really dedicated myself to actually this impossible dream straight out of college. It was at a very depressing time. I worked as a community organizer in 2004 to try to stop Bush from being reelected. Bush, of course, won again. I wanted to disappear. I was so disheartened. I couldn't, I was just sinking in my despair. I saved up a bunch of money from working in college. I decided to use that money to go live abroad in Ukraine and take my grandfather's memoir, which he had written in Ukrainian shortly before he passed away, with me. And so I needed help on where to go to Ukraine. I was traveling alone. I was just 22 or 23, and I heard about this very cheap program to live abroad with college students. I showed up in this program in Western Ukraine and the beautiful medieval city of Lviv and met lifelong friends who changed my life completely.

Andrea Chalupa: In my research in Ukraine, I discovered Gareth Jones for the first time. My screenplay was coming together. I really felt like I was healing myself and recharging for the larger battle against the forces that were taking over my country. Andre Maximovich, who was the young Ukrainian college student that organized that program along with his dear friend Macola Peck, who was blind, and even despite that, he was a major impact with organizing university students to work on civic issues and to build a strong, free, independent democratic Ukraine. Macola Peck passed away a few years ago. Andre has kept up a scholarship fund in his honor and his name. I'm going to link to that in the show notes, so people can check that out and see where my journey began thanks to these young, energetic, idealistic Ukrainians who have built so much despite what their country has been through.

Andrea Chalupa: If you want to know where my optimism comes from, where I helped get the audacity to even make a film myself with no Hollywood connections or whatnot, it's because of watching Ukrainians on the front lines, essentially nation-build against great odds and work for what they believed in. I felt very obligated and honored to go out to London to see my old friend and thank him for being at the very start of this journey and to let you all know that the seeds we plant, whether it's a college program that you helped start from 14 years ago that allowed a random girl in California, me, to make a film. Just understand that the little actions that we do, the tiny little acts that we do, they can send a huge ripple effect across space and time. Be very humble to the fact that you do not know the outcome of the little seeds you plant, but just have faith that your seeds carry enormous potential and to never stop planting them and to carry out all your actions with good intention and with immense faith, because you never know what it will lead to. I just wanted to share that because I know everything is dark and heavy, but ultimately hold onto your faith and including the faith in your actions. No action is too small.

Sarah Kendzior: Yeah, I agree. I think this is a time where obviously we need to take the long view. The people who are hurting this country, the people who are endangering the world at large are people who have taken the long view for their own agenda. It's a very ruthless agenda. It's a very dark agenda. I have also worked in or with countries that have been authoritarian kleptocracies for a very long time, forever essentially, places like Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan. People I know there who have worked as dissidents, many of whom have been forced to leave, I don't think any of them have ever given up on the broader struggle or had the illusion that change was going to be instantaneous, that officials could be trusted, that their own instincts should be doubted in terms of evaluating the situation and seeing it for as dark as what it is.

Sarah Kendzior: I am seeing incremental process in both of those countries and in other places. Sometimes it comes from something completely outside of our power. Like in Uzbekistan, it was because their dictator died, finally, after about 28 years of rule. I hope that that's not the outcome in our case. You can't quite make the comparison because historically, we have been a democracy, we have different expectations, we have expectations of freedom of speech, of freedom of assembly, we have rights. Those rights are not always honored in practice by state officials, but we should fight for them and act as if they're there nonetheless. Once you seed that, whether in your own actions or in your mindset, that's where the win is. Their win is in surrender. It's not necessarily in subjugation. You obviously want to avoid subjugation at all costs both for yourself and for others.

Sarah Kendzior: It's that mindset of well this is just the way things are. There is no point in even trying to change them, to challenge them, to expose them, to document them. That is the loss. At the same time, I see that occasionally. Then I see what's more of the American version of this, which is American exceptionalism and naive optimism, this refusal to see problems for as severe and as structural as they are, this savior syndrome and normalcy bias and all these other phenomena that we've discussed on the show so many times. I'm seeing that now. I do feel like the Senate trial, the GOP uniting and refusing to allow witnesses, helping Trump in making this a sham, destroying legal precedent, destroying legal institutions. This is what they've been striving to do for decades. Now we're at the culmination.

Sarah Kendzior: People need to look at this, to critically reevaluate what their strategy should be and keep pressing forward. As you said, our advantage is the unexpected. You can predict what an autocrat is going to do. That's why people use terms like the dictator's playbook because it is so standard. Trump has been following it the whole time. What you cannot predict is public response to that aspiring dictator. You can't predict, especially in a country as big and as diverse as ours, what the public is going to do. Again, we encourage you to fight back in whatever way you can. It does not have to be the same way that everybody else is. It could be a way that highlights your own skills and abilities and reflects the concerns of your own local community. That's a good thing. This idea that we need to conform and be in lock step is so misguided. That's not the same thing as unity. You could have diversity and approach in a broader unity, a solidarity at the same time. Anyway, I hope people strive for that.

Andrea Chalupa: We have the Iowa Caucus, which Sarah and I are always, I mean, we've been saying for a while now, work your heart out for whichever character sets your soul on fire, because by doing so, that's how you're going to find your people that are going to sustain you in the long war ahead to Trump proof and Putin proof our democracy. If your candidate did not win an Iowa Caucus, and we're recording this before the results come in, so for instance, if Elizabeth Warren, the candidate that our show has endorsed, does not win tonight, we're still going to be taking her plans and looking at what we really like about them and breaking them down, having experts chime in on them and proposing actions people can take on the state level. We'll be doing that long after the 2020 election, because that's why we endorsed her. She's somebody that came up with concrete plans on how to Trump-proof and Putin-proof our democracy. That's going to be a roadmap of coverage for us and discussions for us along with other plans and proposals that we like from the other candidates.

Andrea Chalupa: Follow your heart, no matter what. Don't be discouraged if your candidate doesn’t win tonight. Understand that all of us need to stay engaged for the next decade plus to finally undo the coalition of corruption that has brought us to this disastrous point.

Andrea Chalupa: We'll be talking on this episode about two trials where the verdicts were largely determined by a pervasive culture of Kremlin propaganda. One is the fake trial in the Senate of Donald Trump. The second is the trial of a young Ukrainian soldier with Italian citizenship who was sentenced to 24 years in prison in Italy in a court case largely based on hearsay where there was no proper investigation. Kremlin propaganda was used in the conviction in a country like Italy where there's a widespread friendly attitude towards Putin and Kremlin propaganda generally, according to a 2018 report by Politico.

Andrea Chalupa: Today's episode is about how Russian propaganda is serving as both judge and jury. This is coming as the Russian propaganda machine, Donald Trump, who regularly pushes Kremlin conspiracy theories like “Ukraine hacked the 2016 election” or “Ukraine stole, rather, the 2016 election” and who regularly talks to Putin and whose family has a regularly relied on Russian financing to stay afloat. All of this is coming on the heels of this Russian propaganda machine delivering the State of Union address. Trump was, of course, brought to power with the help of a sweeping Russian propaganda campaign across all available social media platforms. Russian hackers ... That's in the US. Russian hackers stole emails and documents from leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties and unleashed those materials from the Democrats to hurt and divide Trump's opposition in 2016, weakening his opposition in that election. They've been trying to do the same in 2020, which is what got Trump impeached.

Andrea Chalupa: Russian propaganda–whether it's on social media, whether it's being pushed on YouTube, a highly effective platform for furthering disinformation, or TV through RT, Russia Today, or echoed on Fox News–Russian propaganda is hacking our justice system here in America. It's also doing the same in Italy, as our special guest, Ukrainian investigative journalist Olga Tokariuk explains. We'll go into that larger discussion. Some of it, Olga gets into the weeds, which I know it may not be for everyone, but understand what she is doing is leaving here on the show an invaluable record on this complicated court case, which is necessary, because as she points out, some Western observers, including in the Washington Post get things wrong because it is a complicated case. There are heavy emotions.

Andrea Chalupa: What is at heart in this story is a Kafkaesque trial of a young man in Italy. It's a warning to all of us that the disinformation we see on social media, the bot farms and so forth, yes, it does have a real world impact. Yes, it does help swing elections like in Brexit and Trump. In Italy's case, it's a big warning. The UK is no longer part of the EU. The UK has officially left the EU. Listen to this interview and ask yourself whether Italy might be next. This conversation has important lessons for all of us to pay attention to.

Andrea Chalupa: In furthering our interest in Elizabeth Warren and our past discussions on her, Elizabeth Warren has pledged a really interesting plan. Wired did a great breakdown of it. I'm going to read from Wired's piece on Elizabeth Warren's plan to take on disinformation online. Here I'm quoting from Wired.

Andrea Chalupa: "People complain about Facebook and Google as if they're the government, because when it comes to online discourse, they basically are. Warren's recommendations, while not getting into too many specifics, are generally reasonable and track what many experts have been saying for the past few years. Shutting down accounts that spread lies about how to vote would be a stronger deterrent than just taking down the posts. Making more data available would help researchers figure out more about how this information works in spreads. But ultimately the choice of what to implement or not comes down to a tiny handful of executives with no accountability to voters and no real business competition. Warren knows that of course. No politician has more aggressively argued that the likes of Facebook and Google are too dominant and should be broken up. In the meantime, she seems determined to use the only power she really has to affect their behavior, the bully pulpit. Her proposal calls out Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, and YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki by name, urging them to take real steps right now to fight disinformation."

Andrea Chalupa: Whoever wins the Iowa Caucus, and I have no idea as of February 3rd Monday morning, but we still have our eyes on the prize, which is how to Trump-proof and Putin-proof our democracy. Elizabeth Warren's plans are an interesting roadmap for us on how to do that. We're of course including other experts and other campaign solutions in that as well. She's been our North Star so far on that matter. We encourage everyone to stay focused on the bigger picture. If we don't, we will end up with Ivanka Trump as President and then Don Jr. as President and then Jared Kushner as President. It's finally time for us to come together as a society and force accountability in our country.

Sarah Kendzior: Well said. I would just like to add to that I encourage people to look at Warren's actual plan on fighting digital disinformation, because ironically, the mainstream media in particular, CNBC wrote a propagandistic misleading headline describing that plan, which didn't accurately do it. This is just another reminder that no matter which candidate you prefer to go to the source, to always use primary sources, to look through their own plans, look at their own words, double check that things aren't being manipulated. This applies to everybody.

Sarah Kendzior: On that note, we're going to now play our interview with the Ukrainian journalist who knows all too well the dangers of this phenomenon. We encourage you also look for journalists like this who are working within corrupt countries, who are working within dictatorships, when you're studying those countries and especially when you're reflecting on their intersection with the United States, as we have to do with Ukraine, which is the centerpiece of this Senate trial. I mean, look for the people who are on the ground, really telling those stories and hear what they have to say.

Andrea Chalupa: With that, here's our interview with Ukrainian investigative journalist, Olga Tokariuk. Sarah and I today are speaking with Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk of Hromadske Television. Olga, could you give us a little bit about your background, which I think is very interesting. Your coverage as a journalist straddles two worlds, Ukraine and Italy, and the story of Russian disinformation that we're going to be speaking about today is very much a case study, a warning for all of us on how Russian disinformation, as we saw with Brexit and the election of Trump, can have a massive influence on elections. Your story that you're going to talk with us about today shows how Russian disinformation, disinformation generally, can tip the scales of justice in a court. This is a very troubling story which you're going to unpack for us today. Could you go into a little bit about yourself and your background and also the significance of Hromadske, which you work for?

Olga Tokariuk: Hello, Andrea. Yes, I'm Olga Tokariuk, Ukrainian journalist. I've been working as a journalist for about 15 years, mostly covering foreign news. Italy has been my focus, because as a teenager I learned Italian language on my own just because I liked it. Then I had this particular sentiment towards Italy. I first went there as a journalist, and generally my first time was when I was 22. I was already working on one of the leading Ukrainian TV stations at the time. Then I went to study in Italy to get my Master's degree at the University of Bologna where I studied international relations and political science. Knowing Italian and speaking Italian, having some background with Italy, well, I came back to Ukraine in 2013 just a couple of months before the protests on Maidan started, which have become known as a Revolution of Dignity.

Olga Tokariuk: After this protest, when the war was unfolding in Eastern Ukraine, I joined Hromadske, an independent Ukrainian TV station where I continue working still covering mostly foreign news, but also things connected to Italy. Things connected to Italy as in things connected to Ukraine in other countries, like how some Ukrainian context and Ukrainian events play out in other countries.

Olga Tokariuk: I'm coming to this issue we're going to today, the soldier, Ukrainian soldier, Vitaliy Markiv, who was arrested in Italy in 2017 and accused of deliberate murder of two journalists who died in 2014 near Slavyansk in Eastern Ukraine. Their names were Andrea Rocchelli, he was an Italian photojournalist, and Andrei Mironov, his Russian interpreter, a very famous dissident. In a way, we can call him the enemy of Putin's regime. He was quite a famous person in the West as well. He spoke perfect Italian. That's how they worked together. That's how they found each other, Andrea Rocchelli and Andrei Mironov.

Olga Tokariuk: These two people, when they died in May 2014, it seemed like they were a casualty of war. This is the war. Reporters die. It seemed that it was like this. Then suddenly three years later, a Ukrainian soldier was arrested in Italy and accused of their murder. The trial was going on in the native city of Andrea Rocchelli, the murdered photojournalist. After a year of trial, the Ukrainian soldier was given a 24 year sentence for his complicity in this murder. This is the short story.

Olga Tokariuk: The long story is different because there are big doubts about whether this Ukrainian soldier really has to do anything with this murder, and also about the trial itself. During the trial, very few, if any, direct evidence was presented. Some sources and some testimonies used by court were also questionable. There were some documents, which turned out to be fake, taken by a Russian propaganda website. There were some Russia Today videos. Well, with this I have less issues because Russia Today was probably the only international outlet working in Slavyansk at the time, so maybe to show they‘d seen what was going on, these videos might have been useful. The fact that the fake document from Roskomnadzor, Russia's supreme propaganda website, was used as evidence in court is really disturbing. These are not the only things that are disturbing about this trial.

Andrea Chalupa: Reading about this story, which we'll link to articles in the show notes so people can read up on this case. What's essentially happened with the world going in the way it is, it's never been a more dangerous time to be a journalist. Murders of journalists are on the rise. With the horrible deaths of these two journalists in Eastern Ukraine, a part that is being invaded by Russia, essentially you've had, in Italy, to avenge their murders. You've had media, press, freedom groups, rising up to demand justice in their case, which is a wonderful thing to do very much in principle. What has happened is that a Ukrainian soldier who also has Italian citizenship, on very, very extraordinarily thin hearsay, "evidence", has been convicted for their murder. In supporting this case, there's Russian-backed, Kremlin-funded outlets that have been used in the sentencing itself, because the case is so thin, there's barely ... we're talking about actual hearsay, hearsay. When you read about this case, it feels like a Kafkaesque trial against this Ukrainian soldier.

Olga Tokariuk: Well, yes, it is true. Disturbing elements, for me personally, in this story are those that the first thing that investigators, they didn't go to the scene, which is the first thing that you would normally do. They said they didn't go to the scene to look at where it all happened, because it was still dangerous in Ukraine. Well, it's a weird statement, because the place where the events happened, it was, yes, occupied by Russian forces, by pro-Russian separatists and Russian forces back in May 2014. Since July 2014, it has been liberated by the Ukrainian Army. Now this is a government controlled territory. It is absolutely safe. I've been there twice in the recent months. At the place where journalists died and at the hill where Markiv was stationed and from which, according to the prosecution, he was shooting at the journalist, and it is completely safe, so everything can be done there. Investigators decided not to go.

Olga Tokariuk: They also didn't accept any offers from the Ukrainian government to create a joint investigation team, basically saying that Ukraine had a chance to investigate these murders in 2014 and in 2015. If it didn't do it, well then it doesn't make sense to collaborate with Ukraine now despite numerous requests by the Ukrainian government, after the arrest of Markiv, to create this joint investigation team and to do the investigation together. Basically investigators didn't go to the scene. Out of three people who survived in that attack because with the two journalists, there were three other people, one French photographer, William Roguelon, and he was the only one who was heard in court as a witness. There were two other Ukrainian citizens. These two other Ukrainian citizens, they were never called to testify in court. We talked to them. We, I'm saying it's me and my Italian colleagues because we are now working on a documentary, on an investigation, into what really happened there. We managed to track those witnesses and talk to them. Their version of events is very different from the one that was told in court by the only witness heard.

Andrea Chalupa: Right, and so I want to go back to the outlet that you work for, Hromadske, and explain to our audience the significance of Hromadske just so they could better understand the position you're taking, where you come from in Ukraine. What you're challenging here in Italy is a court case that is very much backed up by a political correctness, essentially an orthodoxy that's difficult to challenge. It is true that you absolutely must have justice for the murder of journalists anywhere, but here in seeking that justice, the effort itself is undermining itself by trying to force a conviction based on hearsay, which is not justice by any means. You're coming in as a team of journalists to try to investigate what actually happened and do the work that the official investigators don't seem willing, so far, to do.

Andrea Chalupa: And so, you're no stranger to tackling inconvenient truths. Hromadske TV, for instance, your network, it exists online only. You guys have stayed independent, largely donor funded. You've resisted any efforts to join the gaggle of oligarch-owned TV networks that exist in Ukraine. You have a bunch of oligarch-owned TV networks in Ukraine. Hromadske has remained independent, which limits you to existing only online. You were founded by a group of journalists, many who quit a major network based on alleged censorship. One of your founders launched the Revolution in Ukraine with a Facebook post. That's of course Mustafa Nayyem.

Andrea Chalupa: Your little nucleus also includes Serhiy Leshchenko of Ukrayinska Pravda, who's right down the hall from your studio in Kyiv. Serhiy Leshchenko, of course, is the Ukrainian investigative journalist that exposed Paul Manafort's black ledger story that finally got Manafort officially kicked off the Trump campaign, but Manafort hung out in the background and never really left. Serhiy Leshchenko is a favorite of the Kremlin-driven conspiracy theory pushed by the Republican Party to try to blame Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 election, which is not true. It's a conspiracy theory.

Andrea Chalupa: Just to really hit home for people, Olga is part of a fearless group of Ukrainian investigative journalists that are doing essential work. They get attacked for it even by Ukrainians who call them out for being pro-Kremlin when they dare to go very hard in taking on Ukraine’s own corruption. You guys are as objective and as fearless as it comes as investigative journalist. I just want to make that clear for people. I think your background is really interesting and important to the story and the lessons that we can all learn.

Olga Tokariuk: Yes. I've been working in Hromadske for almost six years. I joined in April, 2014. It's still a big honor for me to be a part of this team. I'm really proud that we are an independent outlet, that I have a freedom as a journalist to do what I think is right to do, what I think the duty of a journalist is to do, to talk about two sides of each story, to choose my topics and my arguments freely without any editorial or oligarchic pressure. Well, I had experience working at other mainstream media in Ukraine, let's say an oligarchic TV station because unfortunately there is not much choice. Since I joined Hromadske in 2014, I actually promised myself that I would never go back to work in oligarch media because the contrast is so big. Here I can feel I can really do my job properly. I'm very proud of the team of my colleagues whom I'm working with.

Olga Tokariuk: When I'm coming to this story, the Vitaliy Markiv and Andrea Rocchelli and Andrei Mironov story, well, this documentary I already mentioned earlier, I'm making it with the, yes, some support from Hromadske, but mostly as an independent journalist with a group of my three other colleagues from Italy. Their names are Cristiano Tinazzi, Danilo Elia and Ruben Lagattolla. They are also mostly freelancers. One of them works at RAI, the Italian public TV station. What we encountered when we started working on this documentary is that it is very difficult to talk about this issue and this tragic event in Italy. In this trial against the Ukrainian soldier and the Italian Federation of Journalists and the Regional Association of Journalists of the region of Lombardy from where Andrea Rocchelli was from, they were on the side of the prosecution. In a way, they see this case as closed. They see, okay, there was a sentence, the Ukrainian soldier was given his 24 year sentence.

Olga Tokariuk: They don't see any problem with how this trial was conducted. Moreover, they say that basically this was a deliberate attack on journalists, although there is no proof that it was a deliberate attack. Well, it was a very hot conflict zone. It was a very dangerous place where two journalists died. Basically, it was the front line. Just that at that point of the conflict, there was no clear front line. This was the place where two sides of the conflict were shooting at each other daily. Looking at it as a deliberate murder and saying that Ukrainian soldier somehow from the distance of two kilometers, was able to distinguish journalists to realize that they were journalists and they were not wearing any press vests or helmets or any signs for which they could be recognized apart from wearing photo cameras.

Olga Tokariuk: Anyway, the Ukrainian soldiers were two kilometers away. As we found while filming our documentary, it was very difficult to see them, also because there was a train. It was a railway passage. Near the railway passage there was a ditch where the journalists died. The train on the railway passage, which separatist used as a barricade. It was obstructing the view further.

Olga Tokariuk: I'm coming back to where I started that all these facts, they didn't generate any suspicion on the Italian side, so even my Italian colleagues and me and we in Italy are facing enormous pressure and reluctance of the other side to talk to us. Basically they say, "Well, if you're making this movie, if you are doing this investigation, this means that you support, that you want to liberate Vitaliy Markiv." In fact, we want to do a proper investigation because it was never done.

Olga Tokariuk: As I said, the investigators didn't go to the scene. We went there twice. The investigators didn't talk to the witnesses who were at the scene apart from one person. We did. What we are doing, we are really trying to find the truth of what happened that day at that place. We are facing accusations in Italy that we have been biased, that people from the Italian Federation of Journalists either ignore us or say explicitly that they didn't want to comment on this case. It is also very hard to work in these conditions because we would like to talk to all parts and present all points of view. We just can't, because there is so much opposition and so much unwillingness to support this independent investigation.

Andrea Chalupa: It's chilling how closed their minds are in Italy to the truth. And a man was convicted to 24 years, right? 24 years?

Olga Tokariuk: Yes.

Andrea Chalupa: A man who was convicted to 24 years in prison based on hearsay. Part of his conviction included Kremlin-funded propaganda being put on the record in court. What is the climate currently, the political climate, like in Italy that might be contributing to this?

Olga Tokariuk: Well, when I talk about it with my Italian colleagues, they actually say that it's not much about the politics or propaganda. Well, they believe that it might have been some human mistakes that this verdict was like this. What they tried to tell me is that they don't think there was some huge role of propaganda or disinformation behind it. What I noticed even reading the motivation of this sentence, well the Italian court used some phrases which are basically taken from Russian propaganda or the way Russian media talk about the situation in Ukraine. For example, Ukrainian Army and Ukrainian National Guard are called “irregular forces” as if they were almost on the same level as separatists. There is no direct distinction even in the materials of the case, but in those phrases framed by judges that there is a regular army and regular forces who defend their country and their territory and then there is Russian-funded and Russian-backed and separatists and some Russian intelligence officers who were directing the separatists at the time, like Igor Strelkov.

Olga Tokariuk: The role of the separatists was never investigated in court like at trial. There was no assumption that separatists might have been responsible. Also, it wasn't taken into account the situation on the ground that two factories, two ceramics factories are nearby this railway crossing where these tragic deaths occurred. These factories were taken over by the separatists. There were separatist positions, 400 meters from the place where journalists died. This was not taken into account by the court.

Olga Tokariuk: Instead, they were insistent that the Ukrainian army was targeting journalists, it was persecuting journalists, again using some [inaudible 00:46:21] report. If you look at that report, you'll see that a biggest part of that report talks about violations of journalists' rights and attacks on journalists on the separatists territories. There were some incidents also in Ukrainian controlled territory. We are talking about Spring 2014. Most of that report says that all the violations and attacks on journalists, they occur and they are made by separatists.

Olga Tokariuk: This document, again, in court was presented as proof that the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian authorities and Ukrainian soldiers attack journalists. It is clear manipulation. This small, maybe not, I don't know if there was some orchestrated disinformational propaganda campaign behind this case. Maybe not. Maybe it's really as my Italian colleagues say, just some human mistakes, some incompetence or Russian narratives that were so present in the Italian media. Even if there was no orchestrated campaign, still this little Russian narrative here, little Russian narrative there, no direct witnesses from the Ukrainian side, no investigation at the scene, no understanding of the context and inclusion of the context, of the real context in the court files, it all might have contributed to this outrageous sentence.

Andrea Chalupa: To touch on your point, Italy suffers from a Kremlin propaganda problem. Here's a March, 2018 article out of Politico called “How Italy Does Putin's Work”. I'm going to read from it. "From the United States to France and Britain, officials have warned about Russian attempts to swing elections through various meddling techniques. In Italy, not so much. In the run up to the election on Sunday, in March, 2018, sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin among many lawmakers and voters is out in the open. The friendly attitude filters through social media and traditional publishers, which means pro-Putin messaging that would be considered propaganda or misinformation elsewhere is uncontroversial in the Eurozone's third largest economy." It goes on to quote Anna Pelagotti, a digital forensic research assistant at the Atlantic Council, a think tank monitoring the risk of digital falsities worldwide. She says, "Italy is a weird exception among Western States because the relationship between Italian politicians and Putin is very open. The line between misinformation and officials promoting Russian messages is very blurred." It sounds like this young Ukrainian soldier who received 24 years in prison in Italy for murdering two journalists in the war in Eastern Ukraine, a conviction of 24 years based largely on hearsay and backed by Kremlin propaganda, that seems like a symptom or not even a symptom, but it's being born of a larger culture in Italy.

Olga Tokariuk: Well, Italy has historically had very strong ties with the former Soviet Union and then with Russia. It's no surprise that some pro-Russian narrative is very persistent and very dominant in the Italian public and private discourse and in the media as well. When it comes to this case, to this particular case of the Ukrainian soldier, what was striking for me, it was that immediately after his arrest in the summer of 2017, Italian media went out with the headlines that the killer was arrested. There was no presumption of innocence, nothing like that. The media already got their headlines that he's a killer. Then this continued during the trial, the articles appearing in the Italian media, they portrayed him as a nationalist and the Ukrainian army who was defending it's territory in Donbass as some dangerous thugs.

Olga Tokariuk: These articles were also talking about Ukrainians who live in Italy, who went to the court to support Vitaliy Markiv. They were describing this, people who are mostly women in their 50s who work in Italy as caregivers or cleaners or in domestic services mostly. The media in Italy were describing these women as nationalists because they were wearing embroidered shirts. This is the sign of Ukrainian nationalism in Italy, dangerous nationalists.

Andrea Chalupa: It's this horrible tendency for people with a political agenda in the West to dismiss Ukrainian patriotism, wanting to live free in a Western style, open democracy and not be trapped and oppressed under Kremlin colonialism. There's this horrible tendency to dismiss Ukrainian patriotism as Ukrainian nationalism.

Olga Tokariuk: Yes, and also I was surprised that they never talk to these people. They described them, dismissing them as nationalists, saying that they have shaved heads and stuff like that and the slogan, “Glory to Ukraine”, which is a patriotic slogan and the slogan of the Ukrainian Army, the official slogan of the Ukrainian Army saying that this is a Nazi slogan, but they never talked to these people. No journalists who wrote about this case that I read or no article I read–and I read, I think, most of them–has ever talked to these people who went to the court. They didn't talk to Vitaliy Markiv's lawyer, who is an Italian lawyer, Raffaele Della Valle, one of the best Italian lawyers, so they didn't even talk to him. They didn't talk to representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Italy who are very active in this case and who are very open also to give commands. They didn't talk to Vitaliy Markiv's mother who lives in Italy, who has her husband there. Vitaliy lived in Italy. That's how actually he was arrested because he was coming back to visit his mother in Italy. He still has dual citizenship, Italian, Ukrainian. That was also some bad journalism. I think there was bias from the Italian media. The Ukrainian side of the story was never presented.

Andrea Chalupa: No wonder Steve Bannon wanted to build his Far Right academy, where he was going to teach propaganda secrets, in Italy. It just seems like a natural environment for him. The Washington Post did an article on this as well. When I posted it on Twitter, you called it out for having some inaccuracies. What were some of the things that the Washington Post got wrong when it came to this story?

Olga Tokariuk: Well, it's a very interesting article. I read it with great interest. I basically liked half of it until it came to the conclusions. Well, I understand that the author was a very good friend of Andrei Mironov, of the Russian dissident and interpreter who died in this tragic accident alongside Andrea Rocchelli. He described his relationship as very close with Andrei and the way the person Andrei was. But then he went on to try to reconstruct what happened. He was only basing his reconstruction on the testimonies of two people, at least I understood it like that. He put it like he wrote that he talked to people who helped him to reconstruct the events of the day. One of them was William Roquelon, the only testimony who was heard in court, the French photographer who survived. William Roquelon is a person who changed his testimony. When he was first asked in 2014 after the events what happened, he said that he didn't know who was shooting at journalists. But then in court in 2017 he said that he was sure it was the Ukrainian Army, although he couldn't provide any proof of that.

Olga Tokariuk: Then the other source of Will Englund, the author of the Washington Post article, was a Russian human rights defender. At least he calls her like this Oksana Chelysheva who used to be a really famous journalist, a friend of Anna Politkovskaya who covered war in Chechnya. She's been living in Finland as a political refugee as far as I understand for a couple of years. She claims that she did her own investigation of what happened. She was a friend of Andrei Mironov as well. I saw her in court during the verdict.

Olga Tokariuk: When I went online to check who this person was I found out that yes, she wrote a lot about this case and she wrote a lot about Andrei Mironov, and she wrote a lot about the events, about the war in Donbass. Every time she wrote about the war in Donbass, she only accused the Ukrainian side of killing civilians. I never saw any post from her saying that the separatists also had the responsibility, that they were shelling from the residential areas. They were. This is an established fact. This person, she organized some events in various European countries in Finland and in Belgium, in other countries saying that Ukrainian army was deliberately attacking journalists and again, tying it to this, to this case, to the murder of Andrei Mironov and Andrea Rocchelli, although there was again and there is no proof of that. For me, this person is a questionable source, because I can see that her coverage of the war is very one-sided. When she talks about defending the rights of civilians, she only wants to defend them from the Ukrainian Army but never from the separatists and from their crimes.

Olga Tokariuk: That was one thing. Then there were also some factual mistakes in that article. For example, the author says that on the morning when the journalist died, it was all quiet, but it wasn't. While working on our documentary, we talked to local Slavyansks who told us that there was a very heavy bombardment that morning. They also told us a lot of all the details, which I didn't want to reveal yet, because I want you to watch our documentary to support it. You can find our Facebook page. It's called The Wrong Place. There is a link to crowdfunding. Many pieces of the puzzle were missing.

Olga Tokariuk: Also it looked, again, as if it was unclear what Ukrainians were doing there from the article. Also, the author says that for Ukrainians, Markiv is a hero that's why they defend him. But the point is not that he is a hero. The point is that the trial doesn't seem to be fair, that it doesn't seem there is any direct evidence against him. That's why Ukrainians defend him, not because they think he's their hero.

Andrea Chalupa: It seems very emotionally driven.

Olga Tokariuk: Yes, exactly.

Andrea Chalupa: The culture of Kremlin propaganda being welcomed or accepted by traditional institutions in Italy, from politicians to traditional media establishments, that's a culture that likely helped drive this verdict it sounds like. What are the lessons here for us in your opinion? What are sort of the warning signs? What should we take from this case? What's the larger story here?

Olga Tokariuk: Well, the most warning sign for me is that it might set a dangerous precedent, because it's the first time that a Ukrainian soldier was convicted abroad for his actions or alleged actions during the war, for targeting civilians, for deliberately targeting and killing journalists, and more disturbingly that he was accused of doing so in the absence of any direct proof, in the absence of proper investigation on the scene, in the absence of collaboration with the Ukrainian authorities that were dismissed immediately by the Italian side as not credible. This is not how justice is done, in my opinion. This sets a really dangerous precedent.

Olga Tokariuk: Another thing which is disturbing is that it's not just one Ukrainian soldier. The case was also against the state of Ukraine. Basically all state of Ukraine, Ukrainian regular Army, was accused of committing crimes against civilians, against journalists, and doing it deliberately. Again, based on no direct proof, based on indirect witnesses, without any proper investigation. These are really warning signs. Also of course, the role of this information and propaganda. I don't know how coordinated it was. Maybe there were really some accidental, small things that in the end contributed to this bigger picture. I think we should be aware of how, like every message that is being pushed through by Russian disinformation and propaganda, how it can be interpreted and how can it stick to the minds, not just of politicians but ordinary people, but people in tribunals, by jurors. The jury was giving the sentence. It's again a warning sign that the hybrid war is being conducted on so many levels and the disinformation and propaganda is one of them.

Andrea Chalupa: The larger lesson here also includes the reminder that culture is powerful. If you have a culture in Italy that exists, that largely accepts Kremlin propaganda, that is going to seep into all sorts of areas of society. It reminds me of what brings me and my co host Sarah together. That is, on the left, because we consider ourselves progressives in America, on the left, it's always been fashionable for a lot of progressive activists to appear on Kremlin-funded outlets, like Russia Today, and to amplify articles and videos and TV hosts from Russia Today, RT and other Kremlin-funded outlets. As a result, hanging out among other American progressives, I would hear some depressing Kremlin talking points against Ukraine from a lot of progressives that I shared a lot of views with. They would say things to me like, "Oh, it was a violent coup in Ukraine. It was a Far Right coup in Ukraine." They would repeat Kremlin talking points to me because on the left in America for a very long time, for many years, we had this culture where it was acceptable for people on the left to appear on Russia Today, RT, and other blood money funded propaganda outlets.

Andrea Chalupa: The warning is to us on the left in America that you have to take a universal stance against totalitarianism everywhere in all its forms and not accept to appear on any blood money networks like RT, Russia Today. What you're doing is you're furthering a destructive culture that can seep into your thinking. Maybe you agree with some points that they make, but you'll find yourself agreeing with totally inaccurate information, like furthering the Kremlin talking points, furthering the Kremlin propaganda, that it was a Far Right Ukrainian coup and not a popular uprising that toppled Putin's puppet in Ukraine, Yanukovych, brought to power with Manafort's help.

Andrea Chalupa: Yeah, this is a very serious case study. It's depressing that this emotional trial in Italy and Kremlin propaganda helped sentence this Ukrainian soldier, young man, to 24 years in prison. I hope your documentary helps his case and gets the truth out and also confronts journalists around the world who aren't abiding by a strict objective, clear eyed look at this story, which is desperately needed given how muddied it's been in Italy.

Andrea Chalupa: We talk a little bit about how strange it is given the years you and I have known each other, how strange it is now to look this week at the Senate voting on whether or not to remove Donald Trump from office over Ukraine, over how he's ... tried to exonerate ... how he tried to force your President to invent a scandal on our former Vice President, his a political opponent, in exchange for much needed aid that your country had to have in order to defend itself against the second most powerful military in the world. Could you comment on what that's like seeing your country at the center of an impeachment trial of the President of the United States?

Olga Tokariuk: I think I'll have to disappoint you here, because unfortunately or fortunately in Ukraine, it is not discussed that widely. There are so many internal issues and events in Ukraine that happen every day. We have so many internal scandals and squabbles that the issue of impeachment is not really high on the agenda. Everybody, I guess, by now, knows in Ukraine that Donald Trump was impeached over Ukraine. There were high expectations before the visit of the State Secretary Pompeo to Kyiv. There are big fears that Ukraine might lose in a way their bipartisan support that it enjoys in the US, because of this story, that it is becoming toxic for the US political establishment, that nobody wants to deal with Ukraine now. Well, we will see whether this fear is justified. Secretary Pompeo in Kyiv said that the relationship is still strong, that the bipartisan support to Ukraine is still strong, but there are facts that there is no US Ambassador in Ukraine after Bill Taylor left his post before the new year, there is no special representative, the US special representative in Ukraine after Kurt Volker resigned in September.

Olga Tokariuk: Looking at deeds, not words, it doesn't really look that rosy. However, there were some pledges of financial support that it will remain intact, that there will be a US support to the Ukrainian defense and army this year and the next year. Hopefully that will remain, that will stay in place. However, I don't think our president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has any more hopes of having a White House meeting until the US presidential elections.

Andrea Chalupa: Wow, okay. So another win for Putin during this critical time with so much hanging in the balance for Ukraine and its future and including its sovereignty. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing. It's inspiring, and it's helping to show the way the rest of us on how to confront these 21st century problems of insidious propaganda and how dangerous it is and how just because it exists online, in a Tweet, on Facebook, doesn't mean it doesn't carry a massive impact and in serious repercussions, including destroying possibly innocent lives. Thank you for the work that you do. We always appreciate hearing from you.

Olga Tokariuk: Thank you.

Andrea Chalupa: Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by sending up on our Patreon at the truth teller level or higher.

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