Ukraine Pilot Sings As Russia Jails Her For 22 Years

Source: The Daily Beast

When the guilty verdict came down today, the prisoner of war burst into song.Nadezhda Savchenko looked defiant in her glass cage as she listened to her sentence. Her muscular arms were crossed over her chest and she wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with the national emblem of Ukraine. When the judge announced her punishment—22 years in prison for directing a mortar attack that killed two Russian journalists in 2014—Savchenko smiled sardonically and began singing a Ukrainian national song, and chanting, “Glory to Ukraine!” The 34-year-old politician and pilot—the first female to graduate from Ukraine’s air force academy—had long denounced her trial as a “farce.”

It was a confusing moment for all news agencies—was the judge pronouncing the pilot guilty, or quoting prosecutors? The main word “guilty” was still not pronounced on Monday. One of Russia’s most respected newspapers, Novaya Gazeta, even held a special briefing on whether to break the news of a guilty verdict and decided against it. “We were torn, as it is a standard procedure—the judges always mention the decision in the very beginning of the verdict and it did sound like the judge recognized her guilty,” the newspaper’s court reporter, Vera Chelisheva, told The Daily Beast. Russian state media, including Interfax and Russia Today, went ahead and published the news: the court had “convicted” the Ukrainian pilot.

Savchenko’s supporters hope that, even with the conviction, Savchenko could be transferred to her home country as a prisoner of war. Both leaders of the European Union and U.S. President Barack Obama have called for the Kremlin to free Savchenko; but it is well known that Putin does not like to be pressured. Russian officials dismissed all calls from the West as attempts to interfere with Russia’s internal affairs.

On Tuesday, that news became official. In the courtroom, Savchenko seemed to be indifferent to the judge’s final word. “Well, I do not care what sort of verdict it is. In 10 days, when the verdict takes effect, I will declare a dry hunger strike and keep it to the end,” she told reporters before the judge entered the courtroom. “I do not believe anybody in Russia any longer,” she added.


Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/22/ukraine-pilot-sings-as-russia-jails-her-for-22-years.html