A former Ukrainian army pilot who’s been held in Russian captivity for almost two years will spend the next two decades behind bars after she was convicted of murder Tuesday in the deaths of two journalists killed in a 2014 airstrike.
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Lt. Savchenko was captured by pro-Russian separatist troops in June, 2014, close to the beginning of the military conflict that threw Ukraine and Russia into a state of war.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says he is ready to transfer Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, Russian servicemen detained in Ukraine, to Russia in exchange for Savchenko.
In his statement, Poroshenko said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have discussed the release of Savchenko in previous high-level meetings, and that Putin agreed to a swap for the pilot following the conclusion of the trial. “Now is the right time to fulfil that promise”.
In Russia, the state news media has turned Savchenko into a symbol of violent anti-Russian nationalism in Ukraine.
“In the 20 months since she was captured in eastern Ukraine and taken to Russia, Ms. Savchenko has reportedly endured interrogations, solitary confinement, and forced ‘psychiatric evaluation, ‘” said US Secretary of State John Kerry in a March 7 statement.
Monday, the court said Savchenko was complicit in the deaths because she helped direct artillery fire toward the location where the journalists were meeting with locals.
Savchenko burst into a patriotic song upon hearing the verdict Tuesday, drowning out the judge and necessitating a break in the hearing.
U krainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko was sentenced to 22 years in prison by a Russian court on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian and Western governments have repeatedly called on Russian Federation to release her, saying that her detention is indefensible.
“Savchenko committed murder by prior arrangement with a group of people out of hate and hostility”, the judge said. However, experts believe that should Savchenko’s side refuse to appeal the verdict in the hope of a political solution that would free her (for example, through a prisoners’ exchange), it will foreclose any appeal to worldwide legal bodies. She started her second hunger strike this month amid delays in the court’s proceedings. She was also made Ukraine’s representative to the European parliament.
Russian authorities claimed Savchenko was captured on Russian soil after sneaking across the border disguised as a refugee to escape the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Savchenko’s defense team has complained that key witnesses were not permitted to testify, and that evidence they say proves Savchenko’s innocence, including mobile phone records, was ignored by the court. She was also found guilty of illegally crossing Russia’s border and fined 30,000 rubles ($444) by the court in the southern Russian town of Donetsk.
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Moscow annexed the Crimea peninsula in March 2014 after an unrecognised referendum on self-determination, and is accused of covertly supporting separatist rebels in the bloody conflict in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
