Moscow rejects call to free Ukraine pilot as legally unfounded
Moscow says the demand for the release of a Ukrainian pilot currently under detention in Russia is legally unfounded.
On Saturday, Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, rejected the calls from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to release Nadiya Savchenko, who is awaiting trial in Russia for her alleged role in the killing of two Russian journalists.
Savchenko was arrested in June 2014 by pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine and was later extradited to Russia.
Moscow says Savchenko, who served in Ukraine’s Aydar volunteer battalion, was involved in a mortar attack that claimed the lives of two Russian journalists in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk.
Kiev strongly denies the allegations, saying the 33-year-old Ukrainian helicopter pilot was kidnapped by pro-Russia forces.
Back in October 2014, Savchenko was elected to the Ukrainian parliament while still in detention.
“Demands…that Savchenko be freed as [Ukraine] PACE delegation member have no legal grounds: she is accused of crime committed before election,” Pushkov posted on Twitter on Saturday.
Pushkov’s remark came after PACE President Anne Brasseur sent a letter to Russian Duma, urging Moscow officials “to help free Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko in time for the PACE session.”
The Moscow-Kiev relations have cooled sharply after Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea joined the Russian Federation following a referendum in March 2014.
Relations were strained further after Ukraine launched military operations in April 2014 to silence the pro-Russia protests in Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in the east.
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