“I have been to Kiev before, this time I flew there at about 12 o'clock on Monday night, as usual through Minsk. At the border control they said that we need to additionally check us: sit, wait, be patient. We waited 2.5 hours. Then we were invited to talk with the border guard and with a certain man in civilian clothes who most likely was an officer of the SBU, ”said Inaro.
According to him, journalists were asked in detail about the purpose of the trip, including wondering whether they had been in the Donbass, to which they responded negatively.
“We provided them with the details of our trip: a coordinated interview with the Patriarch of Greek Catholics Sviatoslav Shevchuk in Kiev. They showed an email from the press service of Petro Poroshenko, which says that they will do everything possible to provide us with an interview with the president. They said that we were going to Lviv, Lutsk and then to Kiev in order to observe the last election days of the main candidates: Zelensky, Tymoshenko and Poroshenko, ”said the RAI journalist.
As a result, Innaro did not believe, and after two more hours of waiting, he and the producer, a Russian citizen, were given a written refusal of entry on the grounds that journalists allegedly could not confirm the purpose of their planned stay in Ukraine.
Innaro assured that before the trip all the formalities were observed, and in the Central Election Commission of Ukraine journalists were accredited for work.
“I could understand if they did not give permission to my producer, who has a Russian passport, but I’m Italian, especially a journalist. It’s almost like scoring an own goal, ”he noted.
In turn, a friend of Mark Vittorio Torrembini, vice-president of the Association of Italian Entrepreneurs in Russia, told RT that the journalist had visited Ukraine for the first time and had always worked very professionally.
Earlier, Torrembini said that Mark Innaro was not allowed into Ukraine to cover the presidential elections to be held on March 31.