The trial of Nadezhda Savchenko. Will the sentence be strict?
The trial of Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian citizen accused of involvement in the murder of Russian journalists of the crew of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company television, is coming to an end. Sentencing was set for 21 March 2016, and on March 2 2016, the prosecution requested for Nadezhda Savchenko the sentence of the 23 year of the general regime colony and a fine of 100 thousand rubles.
Recall that the 34-year-old Nadezhda Savchenko in 2004-2014. served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. By the time of the well-known events on the Maidan, she was serving as the navigator-operator of the Mi-24 of the 3rd Separate Army Regiment aviation Ukrainian Air Force in the city of Brody, had the rank of senior lieutenant. In the spring of 2014, she volunteered for the zone of armed conflict in the Donbass, where she enlisted in the Aydar battalion. At the same time, Savchenko, being part of the battalion, was listed as an active officer of the Air Force of Ukraine.
8 July 2014, information appeared about Savchenko’s presence on the territory of the Russian Federation - in the detention center in Voronezh. 9 July 2014 was officially confirmed by the representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia Vladimir Markin. According to him, Nadezhda Savchenko was detained without documents on the territory of the Russian Federation as a suspect in the criminal case about the murder of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company journalists. The Russian film crew came under 17 mortar shelling on June 2014, near the Metallist village of the Luhansk region. Then the sound engineer Anton Voloshin died on the spot, and the correspondent Igor Kornelyuk was seriously injured and died in the hospital. Russian investigating authorities charged Nadezhda Savchenko with illegal border crossings and involvement in the murder of Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin. According to the investigation, it was Nadezhda Savchenko who corrected the fire during the very shelling, under which the VGTRK film crew fell. Since July 2014, for almost two years, Nadezhda Savchenko has been in custody on the territory of the Russian Federation. In September, 2015 began the trial of the case of Nadezhda Savchenko, which takes place in the city of Donetsk, Rostov Region.
2 March 2016 The prosecutor asked Nadezhda Savchenko to be sentenced to 23 years of imprisonment and a fine of 100 thousand rubles in three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - “Murder”, “Attempted murder” and “Illegal crossing the border”. It was assumed that the next day, March 3, Nadezhda Savchenko will have her last word. However, the court postponed the defendant’s last word to March 9, after which Nadezhda Savchenko went on a dry hunger strike. By the way, for almost two years of being in the SIZO, Savchenko has starved several times. Therefore, the prosecution and the public are already accustomed to such “shares”. This time, Savchenko, in an open letter to lawyers, described the conditions for ending the hunger strike - her release and return to Ukraine. Defendant Savchenko stated that she forbids Russian doctors and employees of the remand prison to touch her, take any tests from her and force her to take medical preparations.
The beginning of Savchenko’s hunger strike was perceived in Ukraine itself as a signal to the next wave of anti-Russian speeches. The “peace” part of the speeches was presented by a rally in support of Savchenko, who passed 6 on March at Maidan in Kiev and was organized by a number of structures involved in helping participants in the war in Donbas. However, despite the topic of the “kidnapped heroine Savchenko” promoted in the Ukrainian mass media, not so many people came to the rally. Only about a thousand people gathered on Maidan to express support for the pilot who was accused of killing Russian journalists. In addition, the protesters demanded the release not only of Savchenko, but of all political prisoners detained, in the opinion of Ukrainian human rights activists, in Russian prisons. Among the protesters flashed and such remarkable figures of Ukrainian politics as deputies of the Verkhovna Rada from the Batkivshchyna faction Yulia Tymoshenko and Sergey Vlasenko. Another rally was held in Kharkov. Here, in support of Savchenko, even fewer people came out - only about 500 Kharkov residents stood with national flags and posters "Ukraine is Nadezhda Savchenko".
Noted "in support of Savchenko" and more radical forces. As one would expect from the Ukrainian nationalists, they decided to proceed to hooligan actions against Russian diplomatic missions. After the rally on the Maidan, part of the demonstrators moved to the building of the Russian embassy in Kiev. The hooligans began to throw eggs at the embassy, and the most determined young man broke glass at the embassy, tried to open the locked doors, but then for some reason ran away. About ten young people came to the Russian embassy with flares and began to hit parked cars with embassy numbers. After the hooligan trick, the Russian side sent a note of protest to Kiev. It is noteworthy that the Ukrainian leadership decided to show that the law is still valid on the territory of Ukraine, albeit formally. On the fact of hooliganism actions, a criminal case was initiated against the embassy in connection with part 2 of article 296 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine “Hooliganism”.
9 March 2016. At the trial in Donetsk, Nadezhda Savchenko spoke with her last word. Before Savchenko appeared in the courtroom, journalists wondered if she could even have the last word after a week-long dry hunger strike? After all, it is very difficult for a person to spend a whole week without water and food. At least, it will be clearly not in the form for public speaking. But when Nadezhda Savchenko appeared in the courtroom, everyone was surprised, so cheerfully and confidently she was holding on. Now, the witnesses of her speech could have questions about whether the hunger strike was in fact, Savchenko read out her “last word” so loudly and clearly. Of course, Savchenko spoke in Ukrainian, so the translation of her last word was carried out at the court. In her last word, Savchenko stated that she did not recognize the verdict or the Russian court itself, and if the verdict is accusatory, then it will not appeal. When it became known that the court would issue the verdict to Nadezhda Savchenko on March 21, she said in the ultimatum that she was not going to wait for 12 days. The defendant stated that she gave the court a week to make a decision. Having finished her speech, Savchenko stood on a bench in the “cell” for the defendants and showed the court her middle finger. Immediately after the meeting, Nadezhda Savchenko’s lawyers came out to the press and said that if she continued to maintain a dry hunger strike, she would either be force-fed by the medical staff of the detention facility or would die.
The defenders Savchenko never managed to secure her release. Moreover, the events of recent days have shown that even the Ukrainians themselves are deeply indifferent to the Savchenko case. If in the largest cities of Ukraine - Kiev and Kharkov - 1000 and 500 people gathered for rallies in support of Savchenko, respectively, this only shows a complete loss of interest from both the Ukrainian population and the Ukrainian authorities in this matter. Despite the fact that in due time Petro Poroshenko conferred Savchenko the title of “Hero of Ukraine”, this time none of the high-ranking Ukrainian leaders were puzzled at least to gather a more numerous rally. But Savchenko's supporters were once again noted as ordinary hooligans, capable only of minor mischiefs - throwing eggs at the embassy building, breaking windows, knocking on the car of the Russian diplomatic mission.
Immediately after the last word of Savchenko, another “protest action” repeated in Kiev. This time already several hundred people came to the building of the embassy of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. Among those who came to the embassy were the soldiers of the National Guard of Ukraine, volunteer battalions. Not capable of expressing their opinion in a civilized manner, they began to throw stones at the embassy building, bubbles with iodine. In Lviv, the attack on the building of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation was headed by deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Parasyuk. Together with several supporters, he climbed over the fence of the consulate. The hooligans tore down the Russian flag, after which the released guards drove them out of the fence of the diplomatic establishment. However, a torn flag, as reported by RIA News, the hooligans did not give it away, but immediately defiantly burned it in front of the consulate building. After the hooligan rally, Lviv police was forced to initiate a criminal case under the article "Public abuse of an officially established or understood flag or a foreign state."
Even more ridiculous were the actions in support of Savchenko in the territory of the Russian Federation. Yes, and in our country, despite the fact that Savchenko is a pilot of another state, accused of involvement in the death of Russian citizens, there were some supporters of her immediate release. Basically - all the same people, activists of various liberal organizations and groups. 8 March in Moscow on the Triumphal Square gathered a few dozen people. They demanded the release of Nadezhda Savchenko, after which the police asked to stop the unauthorized action. When the protesters refused to comply with the demands of the police, the latter began to detain. In total, 37 participants of an unauthorized action were delivered to the Tverskoy IAD of Moscow. A lonely man with a Nadia banner appeared at the State Duma building, but after a minute police officers approached him. A few more single pickets were held in St. Petersburg. I found in the Crimea a lonely citizen who came out "to support Savchenko."
As one would expect, the very next day after appearing in Donetsk court with the last word, Nadezhda Savchenko refused a dry hunger strike. Her “death from starvation” did not take place, which was given a very extravagant explanation - they say, Nadezhda Savchenko listened to the requests of the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, and other Ukrainian politicians who asked her to stop the hunger strike and “live”. The fact that Nadezhda Savchenko stopped a dry hunger strike and began to drink water was reported on her Twitter by one of her lawyers, Nikolay Polozkov. Almost simultaneously, Petro Poroshenko said that he was ready to “use his constitutional right” to exchange Nadezhda Savchenko for one of the opponents of the Kiev regime. As the alleged candidates for the exchange, the Ukrainian side named Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, who were captured in May 2015 in the Luhansk region and imprisoned in a Ukrainian prison on charges of terrorism. Recall that after the arrest, the Ukrainian authorities stated that Yerofeyev and Aleksandrov are officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In response, the Russian side did not refute the military background of Yerofeyev and Aleksandrova, but stressed that by the time they were in the hands of the Ukrainian special services, men were no longer active military personnel. Poroshenko spoke about the possible exchange Savchenko because he saw the complete futility of other mechanisms to influence the verdict. The “worldwide” protests, which Ukrainian leaders and local liberals frightened Russia with, turned out to be not only extremely small in number, but also ridiculous and ineptly organized. Even in Ukraine itself, they could not organize a decent campaign in support of Savchenko, what to speak about other countries of the world.
Nadezhda Savchenko, with a high degree of probability, will be convicted. Moreover, the Russian court has already handed down harsh sentences in a similar high-profile case. Then, four people were convicted on charges of terrorist activities in the Crimea. Oleg Sentsov received the longest sentence - he was given twenty years of imprisonment with serving in a strict regime colony. Alexander Kolchenko received ten years of imprisonment in a colony of strict regime, Gennady Afanasyev and Aleksey Chirniy received seven years of imprisonment in a colony of strict regime. Therefore, if the court agrees with the arguments of the prosecution, then condescension is unlikely to be shown to Nadezhda Savchenko.
Recall that the 34-year-old Nadezhda Savchenko in 2004-2014. served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. By the time of the well-known events on the Maidan, she was serving as the navigator-operator of the Mi-24 of the 3rd Separate Army Regiment aviation Ukrainian Air Force in the city of Brody, had the rank of senior lieutenant. In the spring of 2014, she volunteered for the zone of armed conflict in the Donbass, where she enlisted in the Aydar battalion. At the same time, Savchenko, being part of the battalion, was listed as an active officer of the Air Force of Ukraine.
8 July 2014, information appeared about Savchenko’s presence on the territory of the Russian Federation - in the detention center in Voronezh. 9 July 2014 was officially confirmed by the representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia Vladimir Markin. According to him, Nadezhda Savchenko was detained without documents on the territory of the Russian Federation as a suspect in the criminal case about the murder of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company journalists. The Russian film crew came under 17 mortar shelling on June 2014, near the Metallist village of the Luhansk region. Then the sound engineer Anton Voloshin died on the spot, and the correspondent Igor Kornelyuk was seriously injured and died in the hospital. Russian investigating authorities charged Nadezhda Savchenko with illegal border crossings and involvement in the murder of Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin. According to the investigation, it was Nadezhda Savchenko who corrected the fire during the very shelling, under which the VGTRK film crew fell. Since July 2014, for almost two years, Nadezhda Savchenko has been in custody on the territory of the Russian Federation. In September, 2015 began the trial of the case of Nadezhda Savchenko, which takes place in the city of Donetsk, Rostov Region.
2 March 2016 The prosecutor asked Nadezhda Savchenko to be sentenced to 23 years of imprisonment and a fine of 100 thousand rubles in three articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - “Murder”, “Attempted murder” and “Illegal crossing the border”. It was assumed that the next day, March 3, Nadezhda Savchenko will have her last word. However, the court postponed the defendant’s last word to March 9, after which Nadezhda Savchenko went on a dry hunger strike. By the way, for almost two years of being in the SIZO, Savchenko has starved several times. Therefore, the prosecution and the public are already accustomed to such “shares”. This time, Savchenko, in an open letter to lawyers, described the conditions for ending the hunger strike - her release and return to Ukraine. Defendant Savchenko stated that she forbids Russian doctors and employees of the remand prison to touch her, take any tests from her and force her to take medical preparations.
The beginning of Savchenko’s hunger strike was perceived in Ukraine itself as a signal to the next wave of anti-Russian speeches. The “peace” part of the speeches was presented by a rally in support of Savchenko, who passed 6 on March at Maidan in Kiev and was organized by a number of structures involved in helping participants in the war in Donbas. However, despite the topic of the “kidnapped heroine Savchenko” promoted in the Ukrainian mass media, not so many people came to the rally. Only about a thousand people gathered on Maidan to express support for the pilot who was accused of killing Russian journalists. In addition, the protesters demanded the release not only of Savchenko, but of all political prisoners detained, in the opinion of Ukrainian human rights activists, in Russian prisons. Among the protesters flashed and such remarkable figures of Ukrainian politics as deputies of the Verkhovna Rada from the Batkivshchyna faction Yulia Tymoshenko and Sergey Vlasenko. Another rally was held in Kharkov. Here, in support of Savchenko, even fewer people came out - only about 500 Kharkov residents stood with national flags and posters "Ukraine is Nadezhda Savchenko".
Noted "in support of Savchenko" and more radical forces. As one would expect from the Ukrainian nationalists, they decided to proceed to hooligan actions against Russian diplomatic missions. After the rally on the Maidan, part of the demonstrators moved to the building of the Russian embassy in Kiev. The hooligans began to throw eggs at the embassy, and the most determined young man broke glass at the embassy, tried to open the locked doors, but then for some reason ran away. About ten young people came to the Russian embassy with flares and began to hit parked cars with embassy numbers. After the hooligan trick, the Russian side sent a note of protest to Kiev. It is noteworthy that the Ukrainian leadership decided to show that the law is still valid on the territory of Ukraine, albeit formally. On the fact of hooliganism actions, a criminal case was initiated against the embassy in connection with part 2 of article 296 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine “Hooliganism”.
9 March 2016. At the trial in Donetsk, Nadezhda Savchenko spoke with her last word. Before Savchenko appeared in the courtroom, journalists wondered if she could even have the last word after a week-long dry hunger strike? After all, it is very difficult for a person to spend a whole week without water and food. At least, it will be clearly not in the form for public speaking. But when Nadezhda Savchenko appeared in the courtroom, everyone was surprised, so cheerfully and confidently she was holding on. Now, the witnesses of her speech could have questions about whether the hunger strike was in fact, Savchenko read out her “last word” so loudly and clearly. Of course, Savchenko spoke in Ukrainian, so the translation of her last word was carried out at the court. In her last word, Savchenko stated that she did not recognize the verdict or the Russian court itself, and if the verdict is accusatory, then it will not appeal. When it became known that the court would issue the verdict to Nadezhda Savchenko on March 21, she said in the ultimatum that she was not going to wait for 12 days. The defendant stated that she gave the court a week to make a decision. Having finished her speech, Savchenko stood on a bench in the “cell” for the defendants and showed the court her middle finger. Immediately after the meeting, Nadezhda Savchenko’s lawyers came out to the press and said that if she continued to maintain a dry hunger strike, she would either be force-fed by the medical staff of the detention facility or would die.
The defenders Savchenko never managed to secure her release. Moreover, the events of recent days have shown that even the Ukrainians themselves are deeply indifferent to the Savchenko case. If in the largest cities of Ukraine - Kiev and Kharkov - 1000 and 500 people gathered for rallies in support of Savchenko, respectively, this only shows a complete loss of interest from both the Ukrainian population and the Ukrainian authorities in this matter. Despite the fact that in due time Petro Poroshenko conferred Savchenko the title of “Hero of Ukraine”, this time none of the high-ranking Ukrainian leaders were puzzled at least to gather a more numerous rally. But Savchenko's supporters were once again noted as ordinary hooligans, capable only of minor mischiefs - throwing eggs at the embassy building, breaking windows, knocking on the car of the Russian diplomatic mission.
Immediately after the last word of Savchenko, another “protest action” repeated in Kiev. This time already several hundred people came to the building of the embassy of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. Among those who came to the embassy were the soldiers of the National Guard of Ukraine, volunteer battalions. Not capable of expressing their opinion in a civilized manner, they began to throw stones at the embassy building, bubbles with iodine. In Lviv, the attack on the building of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation was headed by deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Parasyuk. Together with several supporters, he climbed over the fence of the consulate. The hooligans tore down the Russian flag, after which the released guards drove them out of the fence of the diplomatic establishment. However, a torn flag, as reported by RIA News, the hooligans did not give it away, but immediately defiantly burned it in front of the consulate building. After the hooligan rally, Lviv police was forced to initiate a criminal case under the article "Public abuse of an officially established or understood flag or a foreign state."
Even more ridiculous were the actions in support of Savchenko in the territory of the Russian Federation. Yes, and in our country, despite the fact that Savchenko is a pilot of another state, accused of involvement in the death of Russian citizens, there were some supporters of her immediate release. Basically - all the same people, activists of various liberal organizations and groups. 8 March in Moscow on the Triumphal Square gathered a few dozen people. They demanded the release of Nadezhda Savchenko, after which the police asked to stop the unauthorized action. When the protesters refused to comply with the demands of the police, the latter began to detain. In total, 37 participants of an unauthorized action were delivered to the Tverskoy IAD of Moscow. A lonely man with a Nadia banner appeared at the State Duma building, but after a minute police officers approached him. A few more single pickets were held in St. Petersburg. I found in the Crimea a lonely citizen who came out "to support Savchenko."
As one would expect, the very next day after appearing in Donetsk court with the last word, Nadezhda Savchenko refused a dry hunger strike. Her “death from starvation” did not take place, which was given a very extravagant explanation - they say, Nadezhda Savchenko listened to the requests of the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, and other Ukrainian politicians who asked her to stop the hunger strike and “live”. The fact that Nadezhda Savchenko stopped a dry hunger strike and began to drink water was reported on her Twitter by one of her lawyers, Nikolay Polozkov. Almost simultaneously, Petro Poroshenko said that he was ready to “use his constitutional right” to exchange Nadezhda Savchenko for one of the opponents of the Kiev regime. As the alleged candidates for the exchange, the Ukrainian side named Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, who were captured in May 2015 in the Luhansk region and imprisoned in a Ukrainian prison on charges of terrorism. Recall that after the arrest, the Ukrainian authorities stated that Yerofeyev and Aleksandrov are officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. In response, the Russian side did not refute the military background of Yerofeyev and Aleksandrova, but stressed that by the time they were in the hands of the Ukrainian special services, men were no longer active military personnel. Poroshenko spoke about the possible exchange Savchenko because he saw the complete futility of other mechanisms to influence the verdict. The “worldwide” protests, which Ukrainian leaders and local liberals frightened Russia with, turned out to be not only extremely small in number, but also ridiculous and ineptly organized. Even in Ukraine itself, they could not organize a decent campaign in support of Savchenko, what to speak about other countries of the world.
Nadezhda Savchenko, with a high degree of probability, will be convicted. Moreover, the Russian court has already handed down harsh sentences in a similar high-profile case. Then, four people were convicted on charges of terrorist activities in the Crimea. Oleg Sentsov received the longest sentence - he was given twenty years of imprisonment with serving in a strict regime colony. Alexander Kolchenko received ten years of imprisonment in a colony of strict regime, Gennady Afanasyev and Aleksey Chirniy received seven years of imprisonment in a colony of strict regime. Therefore, if the court agrees with the arguments of the prosecution, then condescension is unlikely to be shown to Nadezhda Savchenko.
Information