You're reading: Video puts together evidence to prove Ukrainian pilot Savchenko not guilty

The defense team of Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko released a video that puts together facts to show that Savchenko couldn’t be involved in the murder that she is charged with.

Savchenko was taken captive by separatists in eastern Ukraine and held in Russian custody since July 2014. She is charged with a murder of two Russian VGTRK TV journalists, Anton Voloshyn and Igor Kornelyuk, who were killed when they were on assignment in Luhansk Oblast in June 2014. She faces up to 25 years in jail.

Voloshyn and Kornelyuk were killed in a mortar attack near the town of Metalist. Russian prosecutors accuse Savchenko of targeting the attack. The prosecution says Savchenko, a helicopter navigator, was working as a spotter in eastern Ukraine, and provided the coordinates for the mortar attack on the journalists.

However, the video released by her defense team on Aug. 16 shows that Savchenko was kidnapped by Russia-backed separatists at least an hour before the journalists were killed, meaning that she couldn’t coordinate an attack on them.

The video by Nadiya Savchenko’s defense team (with English subtitles).

The video gives a reconstruction of a battle between Ukrainian troops and Russian-separatist forces which began approximately at 6 a.m. on June 17, 2014. It uses Google Maps and detailed tracking of the mobile phones of both Savchenko and the killed Russian journalists. The phone tracking data was provided by the Security Service of Ukraine.

According to the mobile tracking data, when Savchenko was taken captive near the village of Stukalova Balka in Luhansk Oblast at 10 a.m., the journalists were still in central Luhansk, some three kilometers from the place where they were killed an hour later.

The timing of Savchenko’s capturing was verified by Kyiv-based Research Institute of Forensic Science that analyzed the position of the sun on the video showing Savchenko captured. The video was shot and published by the separatists.

Savchenko was brought to Luhansk at 10:44 a.m., which is reflected in the video of her interrogation, while Russian journalists left central Luhansk and arrived into suburban Kombrod district in the northern part of the city at 10:45 a.m., according to the eye-witness taxi driver.

At 11 a.m., the journalists approached the checkpoint where they were killed by a mortar. The video narrative makes a conclusion that the encounter between Savchenko and the journalists is, therefore, impossible.

After more than a year in Russian pre-trial prison, and several hunger strikes, Savchenko doesn’t lose hope.

She is certain she will return to Ukraine “no matter what,” she told Ukrainian Focus magazine on Aug. 21, just after Russian court rejected her lawyers’ request to move the trial from Rostov Oblast to Moscow.

In the interview, Savchenko also suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin should resign, and said she will not “make a compromise with a scum,” referring to the Russian authorities.

Another prisoner of war, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is facing up to 23 years on terrorist charges, as his trial was resumed in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don on Aug. 19.

Sentsov and another Crimean Alexander Kolchenko have been held in Russian jail since May 2014. The prosecution accuses them of torching a pro-Russian political party’s office in Simferopol in Crimea.

A number of Russian filmmakers, including Aleksei German Jr., Alexander Sokurov, Vladimir Kott, Alexey Fedorchenko, Vladimir Mirzoyev, Pavel Bardin and Askold Kurov stepped up in defense of Sentsov on Aug. 21.

Aleksei German Jr. called Sentsov’s case “a great tragedy.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].