At home in Ukraine, she has been hailed as a hero and elected to parliament. In Russia, the soldier is being threatened with life in prison. The fate of Nadezhda Savchenko is being exploited by both sides, reports GHN based on DW.
Short, dark brown hair, a serious look in her eyes, dressed in a white T-shirt emblazoned with a trident, Ukraine's national emblem: when Nadezhda Savchenko last appeared before Russian judges in Moscow, it was as if all of Ukraine was in the dock.
"I'm tired of Russia's lies, your deceitful judges and your dishonest media," she said, speaking directly to the TV cameras as she was led away by a dozen police officers, like a hardened criminal. She spoke in Ukrainian, her voice full of contempt and anger.
Savchenko, 31, is the most prominent prisoner of about a dozen Ukrainians who are being detained in Russia for "political reasons," according to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Even the renowned Russian human rights organization Memorial sees Savchenko as a "political prisoner" and has called for her release.
Savchenko, a trained military pilot who over the summer fought in the volunteer Aidar Battalion against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, is facing murder charges. Russian investigators have accused her of tipping off the Ukrainian army to the location of two Russian journalists in mid-June. Both were killed in an attack near the city of Luhansk.
Afterward, according to Moscow investigators, Savchenko is said to have illegally entered Russia as a refugee. She has denied any guilt, insisting she was captured by pro-Russian separatists and brought secretly across the border in the southern Russian city of Voronezh, only to resurface in a remand center.