Savchenko to be tried for illegal crossing of Russian border

Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who is under arrest in Russia, is to be tried for "illegal border crossing," her Russian lawyer, Mark Feygin, has said.

"They [the Russian Investigative Committee] decided to bring Nadia Savchenko to justice for the illegal crossing of the Russian border," he wrote on Twitter.

He said that the Investigative Committee had decided to continue "this surrealism with abduction."

"According to investigators, if she was not abducted, then she illegally crossed the border. This is Article 322 of the Russian Criminal Code," he added.

Savchenko's second lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, said that a new criminal case was being prepared against her. He also believes that it is "a response to Savchenko's election as an MP."

According to Russian investigators, the 31-year-old navigator was fighting with the Aidar volunteer battalion in eastern Ukraine when she was captured by illegal armed units in June near the town of Schastia, a suburb of Luhansk. It was said on July 8 that she was being held at the Voronezh pre-trial detention facility in Russia, Interfax reports.

The Russian Investigative Committee claimed that Savchenko had crossed the border without documents under the guise of a refugee and was detained later for identification, after which it turned out that she was suspected of playing some role in the killing of Russian TV journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin near Luhansk. On July 9, Russia indicted her for complicity in murder.

For its part, Ukraine has insisted that all Ukrainian captives held in custody in Russia, including Savchenko, should be released under the Minsk protocol clause requiring the release of all hostages.

Savchenko topped the party ticket of the Batkivschyna Party led by ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in the early parliamentary elections in Ukraine held on October 26. According to preliminary reports, Batkivschyna overcomes the 5% electoral threshold.