Russian Prosecutors Seek 23-Year Prison Term for Ukrainian Pilot
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Version 0 of 1. MOSCOW — Prosecutors in southern Russia rested their case on Wednesday in the trial of a Ukrainian military pilot, asking for a lengthy sentence in the drawn out and highly publicized proceedings. The request to the judge for a 23-year prison term for the pilot, Nadiya V. Savchenko, suggested that the trial, the most talked about in Russia since the prosecution of members of the punk protest group Pussy Riot in 2012, could be drawing to a close. Ms. Savchenko, 34, is charged with murder in connection with the deaths of two Russian journalists who were reporting from eastern Ukraine. Many of the details of the case are disputed, but it has potent political symbolism for both sides of the conflict. Ms. Savchenko was already well known in Ukraine as one of the country’s first female combat pilots when she wound up in custody in Russia in the summer of 2014. She had joined a volunteer militia when the fighting kicked off between the Ukrainian Army and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russian police said they detained her after she crossed into Russian territory and then tried to slip out disguised as a refugee. Ms. Savchenko said she was captured in Ukraine and taken across the border as a war trophy of sorts. After more than a year in custody, her trial began in Russia in September. Prosecutors accused her of complicity in the deaths of two Russian state television journalists who were killed by an artillery strike near a rebel checkpoint where they had been reporting. Prosecutors said on Wednesday that Ms. Savchenko “entered a criminal conspiracy with the leadership of the battalion and its soldiers” to direct artillery fire at the rebel checkpoint, and that “the criminal activity was conducted in a generally dangerous manner.” In Russia, the accusations resonate with a broader sense of outrage that the Ukrainian military had deployed heavy weapons against the Russian-backed militias, endangering civilians in southeastern Ukraine. Ms. Savchenko said rebels captured her before the shelling in question occurred. Her supporters in Ukraine have questioned how a soldier can be considered a criminal for being dangerous to the enemy. The case has become a cause célèbre in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, where Ms. Savchenko was elected to Parliament in September 2014, three months after her capture. President Petro O. Poroshenko tried to include Ms. Savchenko in a prisoner exchange negotiated in February 2015, but Russian authorities said the case was a matter for the courts. Most Russian criminal trials are perfunctory and last just a few days. Others can stretch on for months or years in what critics see as a resumption of the Soviet show trial, in this case to highlight the narrative of Ukrainian cruelty and Russian suffering. Both Russia and Ukraine hold detainees from the conflict who could be used in prisoner exchanges. Ukrainian authorities have also paraded high-profile detainees on television, including two Russian soldiers captured while on a patrol in Ukraine. |