Reuters
Kiev
Lawyers for a Ukrainian military pilot held in Russia on charges of murdering two Russian journalists in east Ukraine said yesterday they could prove she was already captive when they died in shelling, but doubted a court would heed their arguments.
Preliminary hearings in the case of Nadia Savchenko, 34, who has become a symbol of resistance in Ukraine to Russian support for separatists in the east, are scheduled for Thursday in the Rostov region in southern Russia.
Savchenko’s lawyer, Ilya Novikov, told a briefing in Kiev he had phone billing data showing that she was already the prisoner of pro-Russian rebels when the journalists were killed.
Savchenko is accused of guiding artillery fire down onto identified targets, in this case the location of the journalists.
“According to the billing of Savchenko’s two telephones, the first telephone was registered at the centre of Luhansk at 10.44 hrs,” Novikov said. The position of the second phone was at a rebel base and registered at 11.04 hrs, he added.
The two Russian journalists were killed in shelling at 11.40 hrs outside Luhansk in June 2014.
“If at 10 or 11hrs she was already in captivity, it completely breaks the Russian version of the deaths,” Novikov said. The defence was also in possession of video evidence that demonstrated her innocence.
Savchenko, who was elected a parliamentary deputy in Ukraine after her arrest, is the highest profile Ukrainian prisoner held by Russia and her plight has turned her into a national heroine at home.
Though a fragile ceasefire seems to be holding, more than 6,500 people have been killed in the conflict in Ukraine’s industrialised Russian-speaking east. Moscow denies Western accusations it is backing the rebels with arms and soldiers.
Savchenko, who was held for a time in a Moscow psychiatric clinic, is also charged with crossing the border into Russia illegally and could face 25 years in jail if convicted.
Her relatives say she was spirited out of Ukraine illegally into Russia by the rebels who blindfolded her.
Ukrainian and Western politicians have appealed to Moscow to free Savchenko. President Vladimir Putin has said her fate would be decided in court.
Novikov said he had serious doubts about the fairness of the trial she would receive in Russia. “The court will rush and restrict the defence. The sentence has already been approved and it will be as hard as possible.”
Ukraine’s truce monitors reported coming under “targeted” fire in the past few days in incidents that have forced them to review future operations in the war-torn state.
The Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) remains at the heart of global efforts to end the 15-month conflict between Western-backed Kiev and pro-Russian insurgents.
But its Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) -- comprising almost 500 members who are mostly based in the separatist east -- said the number of incidents in which its teams have come under attack has grown.
“In the past days the SMM has faced three separate, targeted security incidents in certain locations in the conflict zone,” deputy mission chief Alexander Hug told reporters in Kiev.
“In response to security incidents over past days SMM is reviewing its monitoring operations in certain locations.”
Hug said one of the team leaders suffered a slight head injury and was flown to Kiev for treatment after being caught in an exchange of heavy gun and sniper fire in a town about 100km south of the separatists’ de facto capital Donetsk.
Monday’s incident in Shyrokyne came a day after another team escaped unharmed from a similar ceasefire violation in the Donetsk region town of Shchastya.
The mission refused to say which side was to blame.
Both government soldiers and the rebels accuse the other of daily truce breaches that officials said had killed at least three people -- including two civilians -- since Monday evening.
Rebel commander Eduard Basurin accused Kiev yesterday of “paralysing” the work of the Western monitors.
“We fully guarantee the safety of the SMM observers,” he was quoted as saying by Interfax.
But the mission itself accuses the insurgents of limiting its access to some suspected rebel bases and often blocking the passage of its teams.
Nato enlargement into Ukraine and Georgia would have “catastrophic consequences” for Europe, Russia’s envoy to Nato warned in a television interview, as relations between Moscow and the West sink to Cold War-era lows.
Ukrainian forces near Gorlivka, in the Donetsk region.
