Nadiya Viktorivna Savchenko (; born 11 May 1981) is a Ukrainian politician, former Army aviation pilot in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and former People's Deputy of Ukraine.
During the 2014 War in Donbas, Savchenko was a first lieutenant in the Ukrainian Ground Forces and served as instructor with a volunteer infantry unit, the Aidar Battalion. In June 2014, she was captured by pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and handed over to Russia where she was accused of having directed artillery fire that killed two Russian state-television journalists in Ukraine.
She was subsequently charged and convicted of murder and illegally crossing the Russian state border, despite being abducted from Ukrainian territory one hour before the deaths of the journalists.According to version by the prosecution, the rebels who captured Savchenko let her go and she crossed Russian border, "I have right for everything", by Novaya gazeta One of her lawyers, Mark Feygin, said she was a prisoner-of-war and called on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations to demand her immediate release as well as the release of other Ukrainian POWs lest Russia be held in violation of the Geneva Conventions. European Union ministers and their representative regarded her detention as illegal and that her trial did not respect basic human rights, including the right to fair proceedings.
In November 2014, while still imprisoned, Savchenko was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, and she formally resigned from her military post. On 25 May 2016, Savchencko was exchanged in a prisoner swap for Russian GRU officers Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov captured by Ukraine.
After returning to Ukraine, Savchenko declared her intention to participate as a presidential candidate in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election. However, she was arrested on 22 March 2018, charged with planning a terrorist attack to overthrow the Ukrainian government. Savchenko complains that the SBU prevents her from going to the presidency, Ukrayinska Pravda (15 January 2019) She was released from detention on 15 April 2019.
Savchenko was one of Ukraine's first women to train as a military airplane pilot, and is the only female aviator to pilot the Sukhoi Su-24 bomber and the Mil Mi-24 helicopter.
Life and military career
Nadiya Savchenko and her younger sister Vira were born in Kyiv in the Troieshchyna neighbourhood. Their father was an agricultural engineer, their mother a designer and cargo manager. Savchenko's father was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union while her mother was an anti-communist. Her mother and sister Vira said in an interview that she and her sister were brought up in a Ukrainian-speaking household and attended Ukrainian-language schools.
At 16, Savchenko was already determined to become a pilot. She joined the Ukrainian army, working as a radio operator with the country's railway forces before training as a paratrooper. At the time she was the only female Ukrainian soldier in Iraq as part of the (2004–2008) Ukrainian peacekeeping troops. Upon returning to Ukraine, she successfully petitioned the Defence Ministry for the right to attend the prestigious Air Force University in Kharkiv, which until then had been open only to men; she was expelled twice during her study there as an unsuitable candidate to train as a pilot but both times was successfully re-instated and continued to train as a flight navigator instead, initially as a SU-24 navigator. In 2009, she graduated on a Mi-24 attack helicopter and served in the 3rd Regiment of the Army Aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the city of Brody. She amassed 170 flying hours as a Mi-24 navigator.
In 2011, the Ukraine Defence Forces published a 20-minute documentary about Savchenko and her military career. She also featured in a United Nations Development Program as part of a drive to promote equality in the Ukrainian military. Savchenko found her time in Brody boring and often got drunk. She was unhappy flying on the Mi-24 attack helicopter, instead of the Su-24 bomber. Her former commanding officer at Brody, Edward Zahurskiy, described her as a problem officer, who was unstable, insubordinate, and lacked discipline.
In December 2013, Savchenko's 3rd Army Aviation Regiment was ordered to Kyiv by President Viktor Yanukovych. Savchenko then (without permission from her commanding officer) joined the Euromaidan demonstrations. Savchenko kept a low profile during the protests; there is a video of her trying to persuade demonstrators not to throw petrol bombs at riot police. After the president had fled Ukraine in late February 2014, Savchenko and her unit returned to Brody.
Angry over her unit not being deployed in the war in Donbas, Savchenko defied orders and left Brody, and she volunteered as an instructor in the Aidar Battalion.
Capture by Donbas People's Militia During the war in Donbas, Savchenko fought as a volunteer in the east of Ukraine in the Aidar Battalion. On 17 June 2014, at 10:46 am she was captured near the village of Metalist, Slovianoserbsk Raion, by members of the Zarya Battalion, an armed pro-Russian militant group that declared allegiance to the self-declared People's Republic of Luhansk. On 19 June, a video of her interrogation at an undisclosed location appeared on the internet; she was shown handcuffed to a metal pipe. On 20 June, the chief of counter-intelligence Vladimir Gromov said that Savchenko was being treated well. On 22 June, there were media reports that Savchenko had been transferred to Donetsk.
Detention and trial in the Russian Federation
On 8 July 2014, there were media reports that Nadiya Savchenko was being kept in a detention centre in city of Voronezh in the Russian Federation. On 9 July, Vladimir Markin, spokesman for Russia's Investigative Committee (a federal agency subordinate to the Russian President), confirmed that Savchenko was indeed being held in Voronezh where she was facing charges of complicity in the 17 June killing of two Russian journalists, Igor Kornelyuk (a correspondent for All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company), and sound producer Anton Voloshin, who died during a mortar attack on a rebel checkpoint outside Luhansk. Ukrainian officials said the reporters did not comply with safety requirements and were not accredited. According to Savchenko's defence team, she had an alibi from the billing data from Savchenko's and Kornelyuk's mobile phones, provided by Ukrainian Security Service, as she had already been captured by the Russian-backed separatists one hour before the mortar attack that killed the Russian journalists.
Since late 2015, Russia's Investigative Committee insisted she crossed the border voluntarily without documents, and in the guise of a refugee. This contradicted previously published evidence and media reports: long before the alleged crossing, Russia's pro-Kremlin TV channel NTV reported that Savchenko had been captured by "rebels" and then handed over to the Russian authorities. Ukrainian officials said she had been illegally taken to Russia by Russian intelligence services in collaboration with pro-Russian rebels. In 2016, journalist Semen Zakruzhnyi followed the Investigative Committee's alleged route pointing out to numerous inconsistencies and concluding that neither Savchenko nor Russian investigators ever visited the places mentioned in the indictment.
Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a strong protest against the illegal transfer of Savchenko to Russia, calling the kidnapping of the Ukrainian citizen an act of state terrorism. On 8 July, President Petro Poroshenko instructed the General Prosecutor of Ukraine to take all measures to bring about Savchenko's release. In response, Vladimir Markin at Russia's Investigative Committee claimed that Savchenko was a terrorist and that the chances of her being released were on a par with those of Petro Poroshenko replacing Barack Obama as President of the United States.
During her long trial in Russia, Savchenko was held in a cage in the court—which is standard practice in Russia for defendants held without bail, despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling that defendants should never be held in a cage in the courtroom.
On 10 July, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a website statement that her detention and trial is "A violation of all international agreements, all norms of law and is unacceptable." President Poroshenko emphasized that "Nadiya Savchenko is a symbol of the struggle for Ukraine. While in captivity she has demonstrated the true, strong, martial Ukrainian spirit of a serviceman who doesn't betray the Motherland." The President also said he had ordered a new lawyer for Savchenko.
As of 11 July 2015, Savchenko's Russian defence lawyer was Mark Feygin, who is known for his defence of Pussy Riot. On 27 August 2014, during a hearing at the Sovetsky district court of Voronezh, Savchenko appeared wearing a T-shirt with the Ukrainian state symbol (Tryzub) and spoke exclusively in the Ukrainian language. She also stated that she had been detained in Russia since 24 June, not 30 June as the Russian investigation reported. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court extended Savchenko's detention for a further two months and ordered that she be sent for a month to the Serbsky Institute for a forensic psychological evaluation, which Savchenko opposed.
On 22 December 2014, Moscow City Court upheld the decision to extend the arrest of Savchenko until the end of the investigation, which was scheduled to be concluded by 13 February 2015. Savchenko subsequently began a hunger strike. The European Union and the United States condemned Savchenko's detention and called for her release. Her lawyer, Mark Feygin, said she was a prisoner-of-war.
Savchenko officially became a Ukrainian delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, on 26 January 2015; thus on a legal level, she obtained parliamentary immunity in all PACE signatory states, including Russia, from that date. Despite this she was not released. Aleksey Pushkov of the Russian Duma stated that her appointment to PACE was an attack against Russia, and that gaining diplomatic immunity does not absolve one from previous crimes. However, the Russian delegation to PACE struck a different tone, stating that it "fully supports the release of Nadia Savchenko."PACE Grants Savchenko Immunity, Demands Her Release From Russian Jail, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (26 January 2015) PACE declined to strip Savchenko of her parliamentary immunity, and instead stated that Savchenko must be immediately released, finding her 2014 abduction and subsequent imprisonment to be "a violation of international law amounting to her de facto kidnapping".
On 2 March 2015, President Petro Poroshenko awarded Savchenko with the title of Hero of Ukraine.
On 24 July 2015, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee of Russia, contrary to the information of Savchenko's capture published earlier by Donetsk People's Republic, stated that she voluntarily crossed the Russian border with intention of committing acts of sabotage and freely moved on the territory of Voronezh Oblast until 30 June when she was arrested.
In February 2016, the US State department's spokesperson Jen Psaki voiced deep concern over the continued ill-treatment and deteriorating health of Savchenko, and called on Russia to honour its commitments under the September 2014 Minsk agreements, and the 15 February implementation plan by immediately releasing Savchenko and other Ukrainian hostages. Other urges to release her followed.
On 7 March 2016, US Secretary of State John Kerry protested Savchenko's continued detention, specifically mentioning concerns about her interrogations, solitary confinement, and forced "psychiatric evaluation".