The leader of the Batkivschyna party's parliamentary faction, Yulia Tymoshenko, said she is convinced that the Ukrainian pilot, parliamentarian and a member of Ukraine's permanent delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Nadia Savchenko, who was sentenced in Russia to 22 years of imprisonment, will return to Russia in the very near future, her party's website said on April 5.
“I have a piece of information that agreements have been reached at the level of the U.S. president and the German federal chancellor, whereby, once the verdict comes into effect, Nadia will be either exchanged and returned to Ukraine, or sent, as they say, to serve the sentence in her home country,” Tymoshenko told a press conference in Lviv.
“There are fairly big chances of Nadia’s release,” she said.
The party leader expressed her concern about Savchenko’s dry hunger strike because the pilot has no intention of ending it and “a dry hunger strike is seven to ten, maximum 15 days.”
“The question of Nadia Savchenko’s release was raised to the highest international political level, the fight for her release was joined by leaders of international organizations, the leaders of key world powers who never, not for a minute, let their fingers off the pulse on the situation around Nadia Savchenko’s fate,” Tymoshenko said.
It was reported that on March 22, 2016 Donetsk City Court in Russia’s Rostov region sentenced Savchenko to 22 years in a medium-security prison. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated at the time that Savchenko’s future can only be discussed after the verdict takes effect.
The verdict became effective at midnight on April 5, 2016. In a statement published by her lawyers Savchenko says that she sees no point in appealing against a verdict that is illegal and unfair.
She is set to begin a dry hunger strike on April 6, the day after the verdict took effect.
