A Russian court may decide on Thursday to extend the custodial term of Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who has been accused of involvement in the killing of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine previous year.
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“The hearing started at 11 am (0800 GMT) as planned”, a spokeswoman for the Donetsk city court in southern Russian Federation, Tatyana Diyeva, told AFP.
Two Russian journalists were killed in a mortar attack last June, which prosecutors allege she helped target.
Savchenko, who was held for a time in a Moscow psychiatric clinic, is also charged with crossing the border into Russian Federation illegally and could face 25 years in jail if convicted.
Savchenko has denied the charges and refused food for more than 80 days to protest at her detention.
Moscow and the rebels it backs in eastern Ukraine are poised to seize territory “at their choosing” anywhere along the line of contact between themselves and Kiev’s forces, warns Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine. She began an 83-day hunger strike in December 2014.
The defence argues that phone bills confirmed she had already been taken prisoner by separatists when the journalists died, and accuses the investigation of doctoring video evidence. Russian Federation consistently denies the allegation.
“Savchenko has a 100 percent alibi”, said Ilya Novikov, another of her lawyers. Since her arrest, Savchenko has been elected as a deputy in Ukraine’s Parliament and is a delegate to the Council of Europe, giving her diplomatic immunity.
Kiev accuses Russia of kidnapping and smuggling her across the border, and the Ukraine prosecutor’s office announced Wednesday it suspected six Russian officials of taking part in her detention and prosecution.
The border-guards service said it found almost 200 cases containing grenades and ammunition, including rocket-propelled shells, in the truck. “The sentence has already been approved and it will be as hard as possible”.
But both Kiev and its Western allies strongly dispute this, accusing Russian Federation of sending in troops and heavy weapons to support the insurgency.
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“When helpless, peaceful civilians are burnt alive in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, when embassies are being stormed and journalists and clergymen killed and when calls to murder and incitement of interethnic hatred are being encouraged in the eyes of the whole world, and all this goes on with impunity – then there is nothing to be surprised at”, Markin told the Russian news agency Tass.
