The Donetsk City Court of the Rostov region has convicted Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who is charged with killing Russian journalists in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic, an Interfax correspondent has reported on March 21. The process of issuing the verdict against Savchenko and sentencing her is to take two days, and although a formal guilty verdict is yet to be pronounced, the judge’s mumbled summing up had news agencies jumping the gun to report that Savchenko had already been found guilty.
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The Russian court plans to announce the sentence on Tuesday.
Neither Savchenko, nor her lawyers react in any way to the judge’s monotonous reading of the verdict.
The judge, Leonid Stepanenko, told a courtroom in southern Russian Federation that Savchenko had “deliberately inflicted death on two persons, acting by prior conspiracy, and on the motives of hatred and enmity”.
Savchenko was volunteering with the Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion when she was captured by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in the summer of 2014.
Prosecutors had earlier asked the court to sentence Savchenko to 23 years in prison. Moscow insists she escaped from the rebels and was captured after crossing the border by herself.
The incident happened in June 2014, at the height of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels.
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The European Union and U.S. President Barack Obama have called for Savchenko’s immediate release, but Russian officials had dismissed such calls as attempts to interfere with the country’s internal affairs.
