Nadiya
Savchenko, the helicopter pilot accused of killing Russian journalists during
fierce fighting in Ukraine’s restive east, had expected to be allowed to speak
one last time at the end of what her lawyers described as a “show
trial”.
Instead, she was silenced and vowed, immediately, to
go on hunger strike after being denied her closing statement at the end of
a trial widely viewed as politically motivated. Ms Savchenko appeared furious
after her statement was refused, despite 90 minutes remaining of what is
expected to be her last full day in court.
In a cramped
courtroom in Russia’s southern Rostov region, Ms Savchenko announced her
protest. “Our first priority now is to convince Nadiya not to go on full hunger
strike,” one of Ms Savchenko’s defence lawyers, Nikolay Polozov, told The Independent. “A person can survive only between
three and five days on full hunger strike.”
Ms Savchenko, who has been in Russian custody since
June 2014, has denied charges that she directed the artillery fire that led to
the death of two Russian journalists in east Ukraine. She also denies illegally
crossing the border into Russia. Ms Savchenko says she was captured by
separatists while fighting, after which she was dragged across the border where
she appeared in police custody six days later.
Defiant on the
penultimate trial day on Wednesday, Ms Savchenko told the judge not to wait to
deliver the 23-year prison sentence prosecutors are seeking, a sentence “that
has been decided long ago from the very top”, she said.
Dressed in traditional Ukrainian dress, the
34-year-old Ms Savchenko, who is the first female military pilot in Ukraine
since the end of the Soviet Union, launched an attack on Russia’s state organs
for their alleged abuse of power. Ms Savchenko said: “I am an officer of the
Ukrainian military forces. I have every right to defend my land – it is my
duty. You have no right to judge me.”
Mr Polozov said that a guilty verdict had already been
decided by Russia’s Presidential administration, which has “wielded the case as
a tool to serve Russia’s political interests”. “A political case like this one
is not decided by the courts,” he said. “Of course, the verdict will be a
guilty one, and that decision will have come, without a shadow of a doubt, from
the Kremlin.”
The
prosecution claims that, motivated by “hatred and hostility”, Ms Savchenko
acted as a spotter while fighting against separatists in east Ukraine’s Luhansk
region. They say she directed artillery fire from a Ukrainian volunteer
battalion to the two journalists who were from Russia’s state-owned VGTRK
television holding.
But Ms Savchenko’s lawyers argue that telephone records
obtained during the course of the investigation prove her innocence. The
documents, they say, show that Ms Savchenko was captured at 10:30am the day the
two journalists were killed, a full hour before the start of the mortar fire
which caused their death.
Ms Savchenko has become a symbol of struggle against
Russian aggression in Ukraine. In October 2014, Ms Savchenko was elected to the
Ukrainian parliament and serves in absentia as a Ukrainian delegate to the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
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