Moscow, July 12 (Interfax) - Three Russian lawyers are going to defend Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who is in custody in Russia on a charge of complicity in the killing near Luhansk, Ukraine, of two Russian journalists.
Savchenko is in jail in Voronezh. “We will be in Voronezh by the middle of
next week,” one of the lawyers, Mark Feigin, wrote on Twitter on Saturday. He
named the other attorneys as Nikolai Polozov and Ilya Novikov.
Feigin’s record includes defense of members of punk rock band Pussy Riot,
opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev, Kazakh politician and businessman
Mukhtar Ablyazov and members of the crew of the Greenpeace ship Arctic
Sunrise.
Polozov has also defended Pussy Riot musicians, and today is a lawyer for
opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov.
Savchenko, 31, fought in eastern Ukraine in the ranks of the Aidar volunteer
battalion and in June was taken prisoner by militia forces near the town of
Schastia in Luhansk region.
She resurfaced on July 8 – reports said she was currently in a detention
center in Voronezh.
The Russian Investigative Committee claims that she crossed the border into
Russia without any identification papers and masquerading as a Ukrainian
refugee, and that officials who stopped her in a Russian village for an identity
inspection identified her as a suspect in the killing of Igor Kornelyuk and
Anton Voloshin, reporters for Russian radio and television company VGTRK.
The Voronezh Regional Court ordered her to remain in custody until August
30.
