You're reading: Abducted Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko resists pressure in Russian jail as third month of captivity starts

After more than 60 days in captivity, Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian Air Force pilot who was captured by Kremlin-backed guerillas on June 17 as part of the volunteer Aidar Battalion while on military leave, has yet to face a Russian trial judge. 

Her younger sister,
Vera Savchenko, told journalists on Aug. 19 at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center,
that Kyiv authorities aren’t doing enough to set her free, a part of which reportedly
involves a prison swap for Russian Federal Security Service officers being held
in Ukraine.

Being charged
extra-judiciously in Russia, authorities there accuse Nadiya Savchenko, 33, of
complicity in killing two Russian TV journalists in the war zone in eastern
Ukraine. Taken prisoner in Luhansk Oblast, she was subsequently transferred to
Donetsk, after which Radio Free
Liberty reported
that as of June 23 she was being held in a prison cell in
Voronezh, Russia near Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast.

Kyiv accuses
Russia of abducting her and levying trumped up charges and has demanded her
release.

In a video
released on June 19
of Nadiya Savchenko being questioned by her alleged Russian
captors, she appears fatigued yet dignifiedly justifies her choice to join the Ukrainian
multi-task force operation to rid eastern Ukraine of Russian-backed elements. In
a separate video she
explains her decision to join a volunteer battalion while on military leave
subordinated to the Interior Ministry because the military wasn’t doing more to engage in the government’s “counterterrorism operation.”

“The army should be
used (more) because there’s a foreign enemy involved, instead mostly interior forces
are being used, which gives the impression that this is a civil war, and that is
obviously not the case,” she says in the video.

Now Savchenko is in the
international media spotlight, and has become a symbol of heroism in Ukraine. According
to Interfax-Ukraine, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had a phone conversation
with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Aug. 14 during which he asked him to
facilitate her release. 

Communication with her,
however, has been slow through lawyers. Her sister Vera Savchenko said it took 15 days before Nadiya Savchenko could receive her letter. Moreover, Russian authorities
allegedly do not allow her to receive Ukrainian-language literature, according
to Vera Savchenko. They have only one explanation — they cannot be checked for
apparent coded messages.

According to Petro
Okhotin, a member of the non-profit Open Dialogue foundation that helps
political prisoners, there are four lawyers working on Savchenko’s case in
Russia and only one of them is a Ukrainian. “Moreover, in their work, Ukrainian
and Russian lawyers are beholden to different systems. So how can we reach a
compromise (in Nadiya Savchenko’s case)?” said Okhotin at the Aug. 19 news
conference with her younger sister.

According to Ukraine’s
Defense Ministry, Nadiya Savchenko is one of Ukraine’s first female jet and
helicopter pilots. A native of Kyiv, Nadiya Savchenko graduated of the Kharkiv
Air Force University after serving in Iraq in
2004-2005. Her current rank in the army is senior lieutenant.

Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected].