The Russian Foreign Ministry has accused Italian state broadcaster RAI News of “sinking to a new low,” after correspondent Ilario Piagnerelli interviewed a Ukrainian soldier who was wearing Nazi insignia.
The criticism comes after the broadcaster recalled two of its reporters back to Italy, following the launch of a criminal probe by Moscow into their illegal presence in Russia’s Kursk Region. On Wednesday, RAI aired a TV report on the Ukrainian cross-border assault into the region, in which a crew of journalists embedded with Kiev’s forces drove deep into Russian territory.
“Western media continue to engage in the deliberate rehabilitation of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and the revision of the Nuremberg Tribunal verdicts,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday, commenting on an interview conducted by Piagnerelli with a Ukrainian soldier who was wearing a symbol associated with an SS division.
The correspondent had already “distinguished himself with stories about Bucha and a dead neo-Nazi from Pravy Sektor [Right Sector],” she claimed, but has now “sunk to new depths after taking a video interview with an Armed Forces of Ukraine member in a cap with the insignia of the SS division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’.” The SS organization Zakharova was referring to was convicted of war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal following World War II.
“It is possible that next time Pianerelli will film a Ukronazi with the symbols of the SS division ‘Reichsfuhrer SS,’” Zakharova stated. The SS division killed between 770 and 1,830 civilians in the Italian town of Marzabotto in 1944, in the worst World War II massacre in Western Europe, she recalled. More than 200 of the victims were children, mostly under the age of ten.
In an extract from a report circulating online, Pianerelli can be seen talking to a man wearing a khaki cap adorned with the insignia of the ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ SS division. The video is watermarked ‘Rai News 24’. As of Monday morning, the footage was missing from Pianerelli’s account on X (formerly Twitter).
In a longer version of the interview circulating on social media, Pianerelli questions another Ukrainian serviceman who has a red-colored ‘black sun crest’ swastika on his plate carrier vest, another symbol used by the SS.