Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko's defense lawyer Nikolai Polozov has said that the detention conditions of his client in Moscow jail have deteriorated.
“Savchenko’s conditions in detention center No. 6 in Moscow are worse than they were in detention center No. 3 in Voronezh. Here she is forbidden to keep personal records, her diary has been taken away and torn to pieces. She is forbidden to speak with other prisoners. She is even taken for a walk separately from other prisoners. She doesn’t get her mail. They are trying to pressurize Savchenko in jail. They have sent a Ukrainian policeman, who comes from Sloviansk. He is threatening her with long terms of imprisonment,” Polozov wrote on Twitter on Oct. 2.
The lawyer said that he met with Savchenko in detention center No. 6 in Moscow. According to him, the Ukrainian pilot is kept in a cell, close to which are cells with criminal gang leaders and a cell with a Ryazan parliamentarian.
“Nadia is holding her own, she is determined to fight to the end. However, she is worried that she cannot help Ukraine from prison,” Polozov wrote.
It was reported earlier that Savchenko, a 31-year-old navigator, took part in the events in Ukraine’s east as part of the Aidar volunteer battalion. She was helping the soldiers, taking the wounded from the battlefield. She was captured by illegal armed units in June near the town of Schastia, a suburb of Luhansk.
She resurfaced in Russia on July 8 – reports said she was being held 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.
Ukraine’s consul ultimately met with Savchenko after a long period during which she was denied any visits from defense lawyers and the consul. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that the pilot confirmed during the conversation with the consul that she had been transferred to Russia illegally and forcibly (handcuffed and blindfolded).
On Sept. 24, her Russian defense lawyer Mark Feygin said that their client had been taken from Voronezh prison. Later, it became known that Savchenko was brought to detention center No. 6 in Moscow.
Investigative Committee official Vladimir Markin said that Savchenko was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation as part of the criminal case involving the killing of two Russian journalists.
Kyiv insists that a provision of the Minsk protocol which envisages the release of all hostages applies to Savchenko, who should be released.
Batkivschyna conferred on Savchenko the first number in its party ticket for the early parliamentary elections in Ukraine, scheduled for Oct. 26.
