Prisoner exchange offered after Ukrainian officer sentenced to 22 years in Russian penal colony

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Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko sits inside a defendant's cage during her sentencing hearing at a court in the southern Russian town of Donetsk, on March 22, 2016.

Ukraine called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to send its officer Nadiya Savchenko home in a prisoner exchange after she was sentenced to 22 years in a penal colony in a trial condemned by the U.S. and the European Union.
Savchenko, 34, was convicted Tuesday by a court in Russia of complicity in the murder of two Russian journalists during the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. She was also found guilty of illegally crossing Russia’s border and fined 30,000 rubles ($444) by the court in the southern Russian town of Donetsk. Prosecutors had sought a prison term of 23 years.

“Ukraine will never recognize either this show trial or their so-called sentence, the absurdity and cruelty of which proves that Russian justice has returned to the period of Stalin,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Tuesday in a statement on the presidential website. Putin pledged to return Savchenko once proceedings had ended and it’s “time to fulfill that promise,” he said.

Savchenko, who denied the charges and is on hunger strike in protest, has become a symbol for many Ukrainians of resistance to pro-Russian separatism in the conflict in the country’s east. She says she was kidnapped by Russian-backed rebels in the conflict zone in June 2014 and taken across the border to Russia. Ukraine says she’s being held illegally, and the U.S. and the EU have both called on Russia to release her. Savchenko was elected to Ukraine’s parliament in 2014 while in Russian detention.

news.nationalpost.com

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