You're reading: Savchenko’s defense team has evidence confirming her alibi – lawyer

The defense lawyer of Ukrainian pilot and MP Nadia Savchenko, Ilya Novikov, has said that the defense team has a new proof of their defendant's alibi.

“I am talking about the video footage that was attached to the case after the interrogation of Yegor Russkiy, who fought on the side of the LPR (the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic) and participated in the fight, in which Nadia was captured,” he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Novikov said that Russkiy was filming a video, which he them cut and put on YouTube, and which contains a short video clip, lasting no more than 11 seconds, showing Savchenko surrounded by militants with a yellow band put over her eyes.

The lawyer said that Russkiy, who volunteered to fight in Donbas and was appointed by separatists as the “mayor,” or the “commander,” of the town of Lutuhyne, was questioned by Russian investigators and testified that Savchenko allegedly was captured after 1 p.m. on June 17, 2014, and while the defense team says that she was captured not later than 11 a.m.

According to Novikov, investigators seized the video footage and issued a conclusion that based on this video it was impossible to determine the exact moment when Savchenko was captured because the timer on the camera was tempered with.

The lawyer also said that last week they received preliminary report and this week they will receive a final report from the center for forensic examination in Kyiv, according to which all the files that were recorded by Russkiy had their timing artificially changed.

“In itself, it does not make it possible to determine the exact time, but allows establishing in what order the video files were recorded,” he pointed out.

Novikov said that Ukrainian experts analyzed the shadows in one of the frames of the video footage, and established that Savchenko was already captured at 10.30 a.m.