KYIV – Attempted coup suspect Nadiya Savchenko, a lawmaker, and her alleged co-conspirator Volodymyr Ruban were released from custody on April 15 after their pre-trial detention term expired and wasn’t extended in a Brovary city district court.
She is suspected of plotting to overthrow the government and planning terrorist acts. If found guilty, Ms. Savchenko, 37, faces a maximum life sentence on all charges combined, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO).
Mr. Ruban, who ran the Officer Corps center for freeing prisoners of war, is suspected of illicit handling of weapons and plotting terrorist attacks, including armed attacks on state officials and political leaders, the state-run Ukrinform news agency reported.
The duo’s April 15 custody extension hearing was postponed until May 7 after Mr. Ruban’s defense lawyer didn’t appear in court. They were released because their confinement period expired at midnight on April 15-16.
Ms. Savchenko was placed in custody on March 22, 2018, after parliament voted to strip her of immunity from prosecution on the same day. Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko had presented a 30-minute video in the legislature showing her plotting to use weapons allegedly purchased in the Moscow-occupied Donbas from Russian officers and their proxies to commit “terrorist acts… and create chaos in the government quarter of Kyiv,” he said.
Mr. Ruban was detained on March 8, 2018, at a checkpoint in the Donbas while returning to Ukrainian-controlled territory with a cache of weapons from Russian-occupied territory. He was placed under arrest the following day.
In a Facebook post on April 16, Mr. Lutsenko laid the blame for their release primarily on the country’s dysfunctional court system.
One of three reasons he named is the legal ability to constantly change lawyers to draw out the judicial process. Ms. Savchenko has so far had nine lawyers represent her, eight of whom were paid, while one was a public defender.
Eleven courts so far have heard their case, according to the prosecutor general.
“An appeal to even one judge leads to the transfer of a case to another court,” because the court system has 40 percent of unfilled vacancies, Mr. Lutsenko said. He described the constant change of courts as a game of “soccer.”
The Savchenko-Ruban case has traversed the following courts: Supreme Court, Chernihiv district and appellate courts, back to the Supreme Court, Solomyanskyi district court, Kyiv appellate court, back to the Supreme Court, Kyiv appellate court, Darnytskyi district court, Kyiv appellate court and the Brovary district court.
A third reason for the suspect’s release is the “unwillingness of individual judges to carry out their work,” Mr. Lutsenko said.
He added that the PGO “insists” it has “sufficient evidence” of Ms. Savchenko and Mr. Ruban “committing the crimes.”
In court on April 15, Ms. Savchenko implied in her statement that her confinement had been unlawful: “I wish freedom to each (person), who has been detained illegally. I do not violate the rules… I am not going to flee abroad, because I am a hero of Ukraine. And for me Ukraine is not just a word. I will fight for Ukraine.”
She has since been ejected from the Verkhovna Rada’s National Security and Defense Committee, where she had access to state secrets. Ms. Savchenko was also expelled from the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Batkivshchyna Party that is headed by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The lawmaker is a trained military aviator with the rank of lieutenant who spent 709 days in Russian captivity after she was captured in spring 2014 while fighting with the Aidar volunteer battalion in Luhansk Oblast. On May 25, 2016, Russia released her in exchange for a Russian captain and sergeant who were captured in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry had not acknowledged ties to Cpt. Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sgt. Aleksandr Aleksandrov.
Russia still denies any involvement in the Donbas war despite overwhelming and mounting evidence to the contrary. More than 13,000 people have been killed since Moscow’s invasion of the easternmost Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in April 2014, following its illegal annexation of the Crimea a month earlier