KYIV – Nadiya Savchenko once embodied Ukraine’s courageous defiance before Russia – a far superior foe that historically has tried to subjugate the Ukrainian nation and eliminate any notion of statehood and cultural identity.
As a prisoner in the Moscow-instigated Donbas war at its outset in 2014, Ms. Savchenko went on hunger strikes and endured 709 days of brutal Russian captivity that never broke her indestructible spirit.
While incarcerated extra-judiciously, she was heralded for her bravery, often wearing a T-shirt in Russian courts with Ukraine’s trident emblazoned on it. She got elected in absentia to the Verkhovna Rada and was given two state awards, including the highest honor – the Hero of Ukraine Gold Star – by President Petro Poroshenko.
“I apologize for still being alive,” Ukraine’s first woman military pilot told journalists on May 25, 2016, in Kyiv upon her release. “But I’m always ready to fight for Ukraine.”
Her freedom ended 667 days later when she was alleged to now be fighting for the wrong side. The 36-year-old heroine and ex-first lieutenant was taken into custody on March 22.
Earlier that day, her colleagues in the Verkhovna Rada voted to strip her of a national deputy’s immunity from prosecution, then confirmed multiple charges that include plotting a military coup and planning terrorist acts, and approved her arrest with majority votes of 291, 277 and 268, respectively.
She now faces a maximum life sentence on all charges combined if found guilty, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Authorities suspect the former military aviator of planning to overthrow the government by using arms that were 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, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told the Verkhovna Rada before the vote.
Key government buildings were to be fired upon using projectiles, and the nation’s leaders were targeted for assassination, Mr. Lutsenko said.
He presented a 30-minute video in the legislature before the vote that purported to show Ms. Savchenko discussing plans to carry out the coup with supposed rogue members of the Ukrainian military. He also alleged that a portion of the weapons cache was purchased from two Russian officers, a colonel and lieutenant-colonel who operate with Ukrainian aliases in the occupied Donbas.
The chief prosecutor told lawmakers that the Ukrainian military officers were part of a four-month sting operation. Members of the 8th Regiment of the army’s Special Forces had alerted the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) once they were approached by Ms. Savchenko to carry out the plot, Mr. Lutsenko said.
Following an arms run to the occupied Donbas in November 2017, Ms. Savchenko was allegedly shown discussing the coup plot with her interlocutors the following month at an army base near the city of Khmelnytskyi, where the munitions were transported. Present were two presumed army personnel and suspected co-conspirator Volodymyr Ruban.
The latter was arrested earlier this month after making a second arms purchase in the Donbas without Ms. Savchenko – they both apparently took part in the first weapons purchase last November, according to authorities.
Mr. Ruban is a decorated prisoner exchange negotiator whom Ms. Savchenko credits with freeing 800 prisoners of war on both sides of the conflict. This week, he lost an appeal to overturn his 60-day incarceration for arms smuggling, among other charges. During his appeal, prosecutors added more charges to include plotting the “violent overthrow of the constitutional order and the seizure of state power in Ukraine.”
“I propose a revolution,” Ms. Savchenko allegedly told her interlocuters on December 1 at the Khmelnytskyi military base. “Because they [those in power, including lawmakers] must be removed physically. All and one for that matter. This is the single method. One day and from within.”
During the conversation, Mr. Ruban allegedly added: “Chaos shouldn’t be feared, chaos is needed, and chaos should be managed.”
When asked by the presumed army interlocutors which top three figures should be killed, Ms. Savchenko allegedly said: “Poroshenko, [Internal Affairs Minister Arsen] Avakov and [National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksandr] Turchynov.”
The perfect day to do that in the legislature would be at the next state of the union address by the president, Ms. Savchenko allegedly said.
“Blow them all up in the city center. When the president delivers his state of the union address to the nation, that’s when they’re all together and we can blow them up.”
Then she allegedly proceeded to outline how it would happen and that it would require the use of at least eight grenades to be thrown from the balcony where diplomats or journalists are seated.
In her defense, since she was called in for questioning by the SBU on March 13, Ms. Savchenko has said that she was “playing along” with her interlocutors to expose their channels and to discover the origin of the weapons.
In Parliament on March 22 before the immunity-stripping vote, Ms. Savchenko periodically stood opposite the podium from which the chief prosecutor spoke; she had a steely, unblinking gaze and her arms were crossed. She often chuckled to herself as she heard the barrage of accusations against her.
When it was her turn to address the Verkhovna Rada, Ms. Savchenko didn’t deny the charges and offered a veiled justification of why she acted the way she did.
Brandishing her Hero of Ukraine medal, Ms. Savchenko said she will never relinquish it or her parliamentary mandate.
“What’s more valuable? What should be betrayed first? Relinquish my mandate and leave politics so that you could be happy?” she said. “Or reject the Hero of Ukraine like so many people want?”
The people of Ukraine, she said during a 15-minute speech, “want peace on both sides” of the war, and “the only evil that doesn’t enable peace in Ukraine is the Ukrainian government… and the evil outside Ukraine that doesn’t want peace is the Russian government.”
Since her release in May 2016, Ms. Savchenko has called on Kyiv to negotiate directly with Russian proxy leaders in the occupied Donbas and has accused the president of being equally guilty with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the war.
She traveled to the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to meet with Moscow-led proxies on December 11, 2016. Afterwards, the SBU accused her of not notifying the agency of her trip abroad as per protocol for national lawmakers. Rada Vice-Chair Iryna Herashchenko criticized the move as legitimizing the Moscow-controlled proxies and complicating efforts to facilitate prisoner exchanges.
Ms. Savchenko was expelled from the Batkivshchyna Party, led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the next day. She was also excluded from Ukraine’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Ms. Savchenko was subsequently removed from the parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense for her perceived actions that undermined Ukraine’s national interests.
After the parliamentary vote to have her arrested, Ms. Savchenko met her sister, Vira Savchenko, outside. They hugged each other and Nadiya Savchenko gave the Hero of Ukraine award to her sister. She was met by SBU officers once she re-entered Parliament and was taken into custody.
Prosecutor General Lutsenko read and signed her notice of suspicion at the SBU’s main department in front Ms. Savchenko and her lawyer, Andriy Lysenko, press secretary for the prosecutor’s office, reported on Facebook.
A court will later decide whether to detain Ms. Savchenko for the two months requested by authorities in order to complete their pre-trial investigation.