Ukrainian army officer Nadiya Savchenko will be released from pre-trial detention in Moscow by early March or sooner, according to President Petro Poroshenko.
Her release is part of the deal that was reached in Minsk on Feb. 12 by the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, midwifed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.
But her sister Vira Savchenko remains pessimistic about the prospect of her release.
“It’s too early to celebrate,” she told the Kyiv Post after the deal was announced.
The agreement has technicalities that can be interpreted in a way that would keep Savchenko in prison. Savchenko has been on a hunger strike since Dec. 13 – 62 days as of Feb. 13 – to protest her imprisonment by the time the deal was signed.
“It says that all those ‘illegally kept’ will be released. But (to Russia) Nadiya is a legally imprisoned person,” said the sister.
Savchenko took part in military operations in Ukraine’s east and was taken captive by the Kremlin-backed separatists in June. Within the next month she was taken to Russia and transferred to a pre-trial detention center in Voronezh and then to Moscow. She is accused of coordinating the shelling that killed two Russian journalists in Luhansk Oblast and illegal entry into Russia.
Savchenko’s Russian lawyer, Mark Feygin, also remains pessimistic about the Kremlin’s commitment to release her.
“Nothing is clear until Russia comments on this, but now it looks like she will not be included in the hostages exchange lists. Her trial will go on,” Feygin said.
Nadiya Savchenko’s drawings made during the court hearings against her in Moscow.
Savchenko has previously been left out of prisoner exchange lists. In September, when the first peace deal called for release of hostages and prisoners, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Savchenko and another Ukrainian prisoner, Oleh Sentsov, did not qualify.
Ukraine protested but was powerless to change Russia’s decision.
But even if Russia now decides to release Savchenko, the consequences of eight months spent in prison, combined with the hunger strike, has harmed her health.
She’s been receiving injections of glucose, amino acids and medication to receive nutrition and support her digestive system. This is still not enough, according to Dr. Volodymyr Romaniuk, head of Kyiv Public Hospital 5.
“Even with the injections, her body has already been affected,” he said. “Judging from the way she looked at the latest court hearing, she will need some two weeks to recover.”
On Feb. 10, a local court in Moscow prolonged Savchenko’s pre-trial prison term until May. Her lawyers said she might not live that long if she doesn’t start eating.
“In court I could hear that her speech became slower, as if speaking was hard for her. But she was actually looking better than at the previous trial,” her sister told the Kyiv Post.
A recent change in prison gave Savchenko regular access to hot showers for the first time in months. Before Savchenko was offered a cold shower once a week. She began having skin ulcers and body wrinkles that she is now treating with olive oil supplied by her lawyers.
Savchenko has no intention of resting after her release, according to her sister. Once in Ukraine, she will either take her seat in parliament, where she was elected in absentia on Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party ticket, or get a job at the Defense Ministry.
But the very first thing on Savchenko’s to-do list while free is to eat a bowl of hot borsch with a pampushka bun, her sister said.
Kyiv Post editor Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected].
