Russia's Voronezh regional court has refused to grant bail to Nadiya Savchenko, the first lieutenant of Ukrainian Air Force captured by Russia and held in a Russian prison, during a Sep. 15 hearing. Her lawyer had asked the court to set her bail at $26,000.
Savchenko has accused an investigating officer in charge of her case of kidnapping her and bringing her to Russsia illegally. Voronezh court in August ordered to keep Savchenko in jail until Oct. 30.
Russian prosecutors allege she was involved in the murder of two Russian journalists in Luhansk Oblast, though Savchenko denies the accusations. The court ordered a separate investigation into the state of her mental health, but she refused to talk to Russian medical experts on this matter.
The female air force officer who fought pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine as a volunteer in the Aidar battalion was captured on June 17 and refused to comply with the separatists as well as with Russian authorities. During the proceeding court hearings in Voronezh, a defiant Savchenko often wore a shirt adorned with a trident, Ukraine’s national symbol.
“In all the political cases that I took care of we were usually offered a compromise. Something like ‘go ahead and confirm the accusations and we’ll take this into account and will try to solve the problem with the minimum of inconvenience’ while inconvenience means a short prison term,” said Mark Feygin, Savchenko’s lawyer, who provided legal services to anti-Putin punk rock band Pussy Riot. “It’s intimidation.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has declared Savchenko a political prisoner.
Meanwhile, on Sept. 14, Batkivshchyna, a major Ukrainian political party led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, placed Savchenko atop its party’s list of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections, which are to be held in late October.
“Making a choice is the most complicated thing for a person… The truth is that I don’t know what to do and how to do it. I won’t talk much and make teary promises. But it’s not the saints who do the work,” Savchenko wrote in a Sept. 8 letter from prison.”We’ll rebuild Ukraine and make it stronger. I’m not scared of this job, I promise it. I’m going for elections with Batkivshchyna party and don’t ask me why. It’s not the place that makes one a better person, it’s a person that makes something a better place.”
Savchenko has received offers from many political parties to join the race to fill the country’s 450-member parliament, according to her sister Vira. She explains Nadiya’s choice to run with the Batkivshchyna party due to her appreciation of and sympathy toward the party’s leader, the former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Tymoshenko, who holds the second spot on Batkivshchyna’s party, expressed her willingness to let the younger generation of politicians into the power system.
After more than two years of imprisonment under Viktor Yanukovych’s rule, Tymoshenko ran for presidency in 2014, but lost it to her rival Petro Poroshenko. In the past, she managed to reach political compromises with Pavlo Lazarenko, a former prime minister who was jailed in the U.S., and Viktor Yushchenko, president from 2005-2010.
Savchenko has been critical of the commanders of the anti-terrorist operation for poor management of Ukraine’s military against the separatists. During her time in captivity she has skyrocketed to fame for her outspokeness, rallying against Russia.
That has fired up a Ukrainian public that views Russia, it’s former Soviet ruler, as an enemy.
“Should the Russians try to keep a member of parliament in jail, we’ll have all the reasons to imprison their lawmakers too,” wrote Eduard Girko, a Facebook user, who replied to a post by Vira Savchenko in which she announced her sister Nadiya’s plans to run for a seat in the Verkhovna Rada.
Kyiv Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can be reached at [email protected].
