Savchenko Symbol

From the BBC:
"Nadiya Savchenko: Ukraine resistance symbol in Russia"

 

Nadiya Savchenko is feted as a hero in Ukraine. Captured during fighting with pro-Russian rebels, the military pilot has become a symbol of resistance to Russia in her home country.  Here in Moscow she has been charged as an accessory to murder, linked to the death of two Russian journalists covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine between the rebels and government troops.  But the BBC has seen mobile phone data from the day they died, that her lawyers argue proves her innocence. In December, Ms Savchenko declared a hunger strike in protest at her detention, though she recently told a prison visitor she was taking a protein and carbohydrate mix so that her "brain was the last thing to fail".  She abandoned her fast on Thursday after 83 days, amid serious concerns for her health. "Physically I feel lousy, but not so bad I'm about to die immediately," she wrote in a letter addressed to all Ukrainians and made public by one of her legal team.  "[But] I'll drink broth for a while, so if I live - it's to fly! If I die - I'll do so healthy! And if I'm to fight - then I'll have strength for that," she said, declaring a "change in tactic". A day before, she had looked pale and thin during a court appearance, having lost 20kg (44lb) since December. But she remained standing for parts of the hearing, and actively participated.  The pilot, 33, has been charged with involvement in a mortar attack in Ukraine in which two Russian state TV journalists were killed.   Ms Savchenko had arrived in the area a few days previously to join the volunteer Aidar battalion, loyal to Kiev. According to her lawyers, she was captured by rebel militants on the morning of 17 June whilst trying to reach several Aidar fighters who had been wounded in an ambush.  The spot outside the village of Metalist was close to where the journalists died, that same day. Nadiya Savchenko next surfaced a week later in the southern Russian city of Voronezh, where she had been arrested.  She claims she was smuggled across the border, wearing a blindfold - causing international outrage, that she had been "abducted".  The pilot was accused of handing the location of the Russian journalists to Ukrainian troops: she could be facing a 20-year prison sentence.  Yet one of Ms Savchenko's lawyers says he can prove she had nothing to do with their deaths. He showed the BBC mobile phone data supplied by Ukraine's security agency (SBU): a series of maps, which use coloured circles to chart the location of various mobile phones belonging to the Russian TV team and Nadiya Savchenko.  "Nadiya has a 100% alibi," Ilya Novikov says, pointing to the timings and the circles. "She was already captured when the journalists were killed," he stresses.  Nadiya Savchenko has now been in custody since late June. No trial date has yet been set and multiple appeals to the courts to release her have been rejected. The most recent attempt this week argued that she has immunity from prosecution as Ukraine's delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. There was an expectation that her release had been secured in Minsk - along with other prisoners of war - during talks over a Ukrainian ceasefire, but nothing came of it.  In his only comments so far, President Putin has made it clear that the case against the pilot is a criminal one - not political - and should run its course through the courts.  There has been considerable international concern over the pilot's plight - with appeals from the US and EU for her freedom.  Now Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has written to Mr Putin directly requesting his intervention, "including on health grounds". This week, he awarded the pilot the title "Hero of Ukraine". The Kremlin says a response "is being formulated", perhaps raising the possibility of a humanitarian gesture. But for now, Nadiya Savchenko remains firmly behind bars.

^ You have to admire the brainwashing that has been done so well in Russia that they seem to really believe all their own lies as being reality. There is no way a Ukrainian pilot would go to Russia (legally or illegally.) The ethnic-Russian terrorists (or regular Russian soldiers) in eastern Ukraine captured her in the Ukraine and then she was sent to Russia for a show-trial. No one around the world, except the Russians, believe that Russia isn't giving men and weapons to the terrorists in eastern Ukraine. It's the 2nd decade of the 21st Century (not the 1930s) and you can't hide things like that anymore. The Russians first said they didn't have Russian troops in the Crimea and then when their cover was blown they still denied any involvement only to later retract and say they were there and then they quickly annexed the Crimea. There's a history of out-right lies coming from the Russian side that no intelligent person anywhere in the world can take what they claim as true anymore. I'm sure Savchenko will be found guilty by a Russian court (to help cover-up the official government lies about not being in eastern Ukraine.) Then she will most likely be pardoned by Putin (so he looks like a heroic leader) and later official documents will show what the rest of us already know: she was kidnapped in the Ukraine and brought to Russia against her will. They say you are supposed to learn from history so you don't repeat the mistakes of the past yet it doesn't seem like Russia  or its government have learned from the bold-face lies of its past (ie there were no Soviet missiles in Cuba even when we had photographic proof and then all of a sudden there were.) ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31760381