You're reading: Savchenko arrives back in Ukraine (LIVE UPDATE)

Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko, sentenced in Russia on bogus murder charges to 22 years in prison, was exchanged on May 25 for two Russian officers imprisoned in Ukraine.

The exchange took place in secrecy in the airport of Rostov-on-Don in Russia. Savchenko arrived to Kyiv Boryspil Airport at 3 p.m.

This is what the Kyiv Post knows:

5:37 p.m. Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko has held a formal reception for Nadiya Savchenko at the Presidential
Administration.

Poroshenko said that with
Savchenko’s return, Ukraine had got back its hope for victory. “As well returning
Nadiya, we will return Donbas and Crimea to Ukraine’s sovereignty,”
Poroshenko said.

“Nadiya has become a
symbol of the pride and invincibility of Ukraine.”

He also thanked all international
partners who supported Ukraine.

Savchenko made a short speech:

“I thank my mother for waiting
for me and my sister for fighting for me. The nation is a strong force. The
essence of the democracy is for the nation to talk and to make (the authorities)
hear it. We will be heard, as we are Ukrainians, and we’ve given our lives to
be heard

I do not want to give you my
anger, my spite and my hate. I hope that with time it will transfer into
wisdom. I don’t want people to wish for war, I want them to wish for peace. But
sometimes peace is possible only through war.”

Savchenko also addressed the
Russian people: “Do not be afraid. You need to get up from your knees.”

After the press conference,
Poroshenko awarded Savchenko with the title of Hero of Ukraine.

3:30 p.m. Savchenko made her first appearance after her plane landed in Ukraine. She went out of the airport building, barefoot, wearing blue jeans and her trademark white t-shirt with Ukraine’s trident on it.

Savchenko briefly addressed the journalists in the airport.

“I honestly don’t know how I managed to do it,” she said, thanking all who helped release her.

Savchenko made some political statements, as well. In a shouting voice, she said that she will make sure that “the heroes of Ukraine are coming to take places in Verkhovna Rada.”

She then left the airport and went to the president’s administration to give a press conference.


3:12 p.m. Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned Savchenko before the exchange, his spokesman Dmitriy Peskov confirmed on May 25.

It is not clear yet if Savchenko or her lawyers filed for pardon. Before, Savchenko said she wouldn’t do it.

Russian court in Rostov-on-Don Oblast sentenced Savchenko to 22 years in jail for coordinating the artillery fire that killed two Russian journalists in Ukraine’s Donbas in 2014.

3:02 p.m. The plane carrying Savchenko landed in Kyiv’s Boryspil airport. Savchenko’s mother and sister are meeting her on the runway.

2:52 p.m. The plane carrying Savchenko reportedly arrives in five minutes.

2:52 p.m. Yevheniya Korotych, a retail employee working near Boryspilska metro station not far from the airport, rushed to Boryspil as soon as she heard that Savchenko was being brought.

She took two friends and brought a big bouquet of flowers.

Korotych says that she was surprised to find no one but journalists in the airport.

“Nadiya is the symbol of our fight,” she told Kyiv Post. “Her release seemed impossible, but now it is finally happening.”

2:35 p.m. Savchenko’s mother Maria Savchenko and sister Vira Savchenko arrived to the airport.


“It’s too early to celebrate. Let’s first see that the plane sits and Nadia is on board,” Vira Savchenko said. “There is no language to express my emotions now.”

Batkivshchyna party lawmaker Ihor Lutsenko, who is also in Boryspil airport, said that Savchenko’s relatives were kept uninformed about the time and place of her arrival until the very last moment.

Vira Savchenko said that he hinted at her sister’s release earlier in the day by changing her Facebook page cover photo to a picture of Nadia Savchenko next to a

2:25 p.m. Around 100 reporters gathered near the entrance to the closed Terminal B waiting for Savchenko’s arrival.



Photos: Radio Free Europe

2:07 p.m. Savchenko’s lawyer Mark Feygin confirmed on Twitter that Savchenko was exchanged and is on her way to Kyiv.

“Two years ago I told Ukrainians that I will do everything to release Savchenko,” Feygin wrote. “I kept the promise.”

2:05 p.m. Several online streams from the airport are available: Hromadske TV, Radio Free Europe.

1:40 p.m. Ukrainian politician and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko met with Savchenko’s mother and sister in the Batkivshchyna party office. Savchenko is a member of Tymoshenko’s party in parliament, elected in absentia in 2014.


Yulia Tymoshenko hugs Savchenko’s mother Maria Savchenko. (www.facebook.com/sashk0)

Vira and Maria Savchenko. Photo: Alyona Shkrum/Twitter

1:58 p.m. President Petro Poroshenko arrived to Boryspil airport’s Terminal B. The terminal is closed.

1:35 p.m. Sources in government tell several Ukrainian and foreign media that Savchenko’s plane will land in Kyiv’s Boryspil airport around 2:45 p.m.

Meanwhile, Russian media report that the two Russian intelligence officers who were allegedly exchanged for Savchenko in Rostov-on-Don are flying to Moscow.

1:25 p.m. Savchenko’s Russian lawyer Ilya Novikov who was in the Rostov airport tweeted a “+” symbol.

1:15 p.m. Ukrinform news agency reports that Savchenko’s mother and sister, Maria Savchenko and Vira Savchenko, are going to Kyiv-Boryspil International Airport to meet the released pilot.

1:10 p.m. Ukrainian TSN news website, cites their sources in Rostov-on-Don airport, as saying that Savchenko indeed left the airport for Ukraine.

1:10 p.m. President Petro Poroshenko will address the nation from his administration at 3:15 p.m.

1:05 p.m. Yuri Tandit, responsible for prisoners exchanges in Ukraine’s State Security Service, said he couldn’t comment yet to preserve the secrecy of the exchange.

“As you can see, we are not publicizing this event,” he told Kyiv Post.

12:45 p.m. Reports say that President Petro Poroshenko’s plane delivered Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate agents Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov to Russian Rostov-on-Don to be exchanged for Savchenko.

It is not clear yet if Savchenko will be exchanged in the airport, but media speculate that the same plane will bring her home.

Savchenko was captured by Russia-backed separatists in the war-torn Luhansk Oblast in June 2014 when she was a volunteer fighter with the Aidar Battalion. The separatists then passed her to Russian authorities who accused her of coordinating the fire that killed two Russian journalists in Ukraine’s east.

Flightradar, an online service that tracks routes of the planes, shows that Poroshenko’s plane left Kyiv Boryspil airport at 8 a.m. on May 25 and flew to Rostov-on-Don.

At the same time, Flightradar shows a Russian government plane landing in a military airport in Gostomel near Kyiv on 11 a.m. and leaving for Moscow in one hour.

Ilya Novikov, Savchenko’s lawyer, told Kyiv Post he was in Rostov-on-Don’s airport but that he “couldn’t confirm or deny anything.”

Valentyn Rybin, Alexandrov’s lawyer, told Hromadske TV that “the active phaze of the exchange has started.”

Just a day before, Savchenko’s lawyer Mark Feygin republished a letter she wrote to her lawyers in March forbidding them to file an appeal, petition for pardon or admission of guilt.

In case of violating my will, I will regard it as betrayal on your part with an automatic rejection of you as a lawyer,” she wrote in her address to her lawyers, published by her lawyer Mark Feygin.

But Feygin said it was time for Savchenko to change her mind.

“For your information, a lawyer can file a petition for pardon on his own,” Feygin mysteriously wrote on Twitter on May 24.

The two Russian officers that are to be exchanged, Yerofeyev and Alexandrov, were detained last July during an armed clash with Ukrainian military in Luhansk Oblast.