KYIV – Nadiya Savchenko, the former Ukrainian military pilot who was kidnapped by pro-Russian forces on Ukrainian territory in June 2014, was released to Ukraine on May 25 after nearly two years in captivity during which she endured what is globally recognized as a show trial that convicted her on false charges of complicity in murder.
The 35-year-old native of Kyiv became Ukraine’s internationally recognized symbol in the war against Russia as the public learned of the nefarious nature of her capture by Donbas terrorists who surrendered her to Russian officials, the torture she endured in prison, her repeated hunger strikes that brought her to the brink of death and the rigged criminal trial that exposed the extreme corruption of Russian courts.
Upon arriving at Boryspil International Airport near the capital, she was greeted by her mother, Maria, and sister, Vira, offered a few remarks before journalists, before heading to the Presidential Administration, where she was presented with the highest state honor, the Golden Star of the Hero of Ukraine award, for her unbreakable will, civic bravery and sacrificial service to the Ukrainian people.
“For 709 long days, we worried, prayed, actively worked and organized protests to gain what happened on this present day. A day when hope returned to Ukraine – Nadiya Savchenko and hope – and the firm faith in our victory,” said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, playing on words that referred to the meaning of the names of both Nadiya (hope) and her sister, Vira (faith).
“Just as we returned Nadiya, we will also return the Donbas and Crimea under Ukrainian sovereignty,” the president said with Ms. Savchenko at his side. He made a special effort to thank a series of governments that stood firmly with him in demanding Ms. Savchenko’s immediate release and return.
In her subsequent remarks, Ms. Savchenko immediately thanked the public, both in Ukraine and the world. “If the people had not spoken, then the politicians would have done nothing,” she said. “There’s probably a purpose to democracy in that the people spoke and were heard.”
She thanked all the Ukrainian soldiers, both alive and dead, and awkwardly apologized for remaining alive. Ukraine has a right to exist, she said, “disregarding anyone’s rotted spirit and sick mind.” She expressed her support for the Minsk accords and the need for them to be fulfilled, also vowing to work to free all Ukrainian prisoners of war.
“I don’t want people to want war. I want people to want peace. But unfortunately, peace is only possible through war. There are bounds beyond which there is no other path,” she said.
Ms. Savchenko also addressed the Russian people, telling them they have nothing to fear and underscoring that they need to stand up from their knees. At a minimum, Ukrainians “can’t allow them to come here, not allow them to go any further than what they’re thinking to themselves they can.”
She concluded her remarks with “For Ukraine! Ukraine Above All! Glory to Ukraine!” and was embraced by her Aidar battalion commander, who was present.
Ms. Savchenko’s mother received the largest bouquet that afternoon from the president.
Hours later, television news reports showed Ms. Savchenko being welcomed by her neighbors with bouquets of flowers at the entrance to her apartment building in Kyiv’s Troyeshchyna district, where she grew up.
Her mother complained to reporters that the whirlwind of events that day prevented her from being able to prepare borshch for their dinner together. But she also mentioned that she had known for at least a week that Ms. Savchenko would be returning.
Ms. Savchenko’s release was secured during telephone negotiations in recent weeks involving leaders of the Normandy format, which consists of Mr. Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Presidential Administration officials said.
Mr. Poroshenko himself said the release date was postponed several times, including most recently May 18 and then May 22, following many other dates.
Mikhail Palinchak/UNIAN
Nadiya Savchenko, barefoot, takes her first steps on Ukrainian territory after her release from a Russian prison.
As a small example of delays, Oleg Mezentsev, personal assistant to Nadiya Savchenko in her position as a national deputy, blamed the Interfax news agency for leaking information hours ahead of her release, thereby delaying it by five hours during which she had to remain in a police truck.
The final decision was reached on the telephone late on May 23, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper reported. In an interview with Hromadske television, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly reserved special credit for U.S. President Barack Obama.
“The [Ukrainian] president was absolutely correct when he said that this became possible owing to strong international support,” he said. “President Obama very seriously joined this support. I can say that the U.S. president’s role was very important. Obviously, that was also the case with the leaders of the Normandy Format.”
The logistics of the operation to transfer Ms. Savchenko to Ukraine was planned for months, Iryna Herashchenko, the president’s ombudsman for the peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, revealed afterwards.
Ms. Savchenko could only enter the Ukrainian plane, parked in Rostov, after the two Russian special agents for whom she was exchanged had boarded a Russian plane parked in Kyiv. When she did board the plane, Ms. Herashchenko described her as a string pulled tight, not believing what was happening.
When handed a bouquet, she rejected it, “I don’t like flowers!” Instead she cherished two shopping bags of letters that she brought with her, which she reportedly received in just the last month.
“She rushed into the pilot’s cabin and smiled at last – earnestly, widely and happily,” Ms. Herashchenko wrote on her Facebook page. “Only in the cabin did she feel that everything that’s happening is true.”
Ms. Savchenko returned to the cabin to see the plane cross the Ukrainian border, she wrote. The two-hour flight was spent discussing the number of remaining prisoners of war on both sides and how negotiations are progressing to release them.
After a brief private reunion with her mother and sister, Ms. Savchenko and her sister emerged before the public, only to be swarmed by dozens of excited members of the mass media, which clearly agitated the war hero.
“I sat in a cell for two years and I’m not used to people. Back off! Give me my personal space! I will speak in a way for all of you to hear,” she said, before giving a two-minute speech during which she expressed empathy for the mothers of soldiers who died or were imprisoned.
It was then that she uttered lines that will likely make the history books: “I want to thank those who wished me well, because I survived because of you. I want to thank those who wished me the worst, because I survived to spite you. I want to thank those who were indifferent, because they didn’t interfere. Thank you everyone!”
Being sure to capitalize on the historical moment was Yulia Tymoshenko, the head of the Batkivshchyna party that enabled Ms. Savchenko to become a Ukrainian national deputy and member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe by including her on its party list in the 2014 parliamentary elections.
“Trymaysia! You defeated them. Remember that. You defeated them,” Ms. Tymoshenko told her in an emotional tone in front of the cameras.
In assessing Ms. Savchenko’s state of mind at that moment, Kyiv psychologist Valentyna Domska told the gazeta.ua news site that the former prisoner was clearly annoyed by the show that was organized by Ukraine’s politicians during her return.
When receiving her award from President Poroshenko, Ms. Savchenko appeared visibly uncomfortable and was restraining her emotions and thoughts, she said. “She didn’t even look in his direction,” Ms. Domska said, examining the video. “She doesn’t want someone to improve their image based on her release. How hard it is to restrain herself and how it hurts her to listen to the president’s melodramatic speech. She’s rolling her eyes, sighing, shifting about, bending her back. She wants for this to end as soon as possible. She’s angry, but keeping it all to herself. Even when shaking Poroshenko’s hand, she’s looking at him disdainfully.”
Indeed, news reports surfaced in the morning of May 25 that Ms. Savchenko would be released, which was ultimately confirmed in the afternoon with video footage of Mr. Putin broadcast on Russian television announcing that he would be pardoning Ms. Savchenko, who had been sentenced to 22 years in prison, with a decree signed that day.
He claimed to have done so at the request of the female relatives of the two Russian journalists in whose deaths Ms. Savchenko was found complicit. They were depicted in the video sitting at a table at a right angle to Mr. Putin, opposite Viktor Medvedchuk, a KGB official who is widely considered to be Mr. Putin’s right-hand man in Ukraine.
In late March, these two relatives allegedly turned to Mr. Medvedchuk for his assistance and submitted letters asking for Ms. Savchenko’s pardon “out of concern for humaneness,” said Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Mr. Putin, who didn’t explain what had prompted their concern for humaneness if Ms. Savchenko was serving a sentence for the alleged murder of their respective husband and brother.
“At this moment, I won’t return to this tragedy, as a result of which you lost your close ones,” Mr. Putin said, cynically adding, “I merely want to thank you for your position and I express the hope that similar decisions – dictated by concerns for humaneness above all – will lead to reducing the confrontation in the conflict zone and will help avoid similar horrible and needless losses.”
Ms. Savchenko repeatedly refused to ask for a pardon, let alone recognize her conviction, so it remained to be revealed at her May 27 press conference (which was to take place after The Ukrainian Weekly’s press deadline) whether the pardon was granted with or without her permission.
The same afternoon, a presidential plane sent by Mr. Putin transported Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Aleksandr Aleksandrov to Moscow from Kyiv. As seen in the video footage released, they were greeted upon their return by their wives, without any remarks to journalists.
Though the Russian government continued to insist the two men were in Ukraine of their own will, they have repeatedly acknowledged, including in an interview with the Reuters news agency, that they were in the Donbas as Russian special forces, captured during a secret operation.
The Russian government doesn’t consider the release of Ms. Savchenko, or any Ukrainians convicted and imprisoned in Russia, as fulfilling the Minsk accords requirements to mutually release all war prisoners, said Mr. Peskov. Instead such releases are the fulfillment of a separate, mutually signed charter on transferring convicts.
Political observers commented that Mr. Poroshenko was particularly interested in Ms. Savchenko’s release because he needed something positive ahead of his two-year anniversary as president on June 7, which would deflect much of the swelling discontent that he faces.
A poll released on May 26 revealed that Ms. Tymoshenko and Oleh Liashko would receive more votes in a presidential election than Mr. Poroshenko, who would earn only 13.5 percent of the vote. The poll involved 2,039 respondents and was conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
And on May 20, about 5,000 supporters of the Azov paramilitary group marched in Kyiv and threatened violence in the event that the president arranged for local elections in occupied Donbas without re-establishing Ukrainian control of Russian border. Mr. Poroshenko has been advocating for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the border during the elections.
“Savchenko’s return on the anniversary of Poroshenko’s elections is candy with which they’re trying to sweeten the bitterness of two years of unfulfilled promises and ruined hopes,” said Andriy Zolotarev, the director of the Third Sector consulting firm. “It’s a strong step by the president’s team, and its timing is very effective.”
Many of these same experts were also convinced her release came at a potentially harsh price for Ukraine that the public might not even be aware of.
“The price that Ukraine will pay for freeing Savchenko has already been determined, and it could be tied to the recent alleged progress in fulfilling the Minsk accords, in particular the OSCE mission and certain positions agreed upon,” said Petro Oleshchuk, an assistant professor of political science at Shevchenko National University in Kyiv.
“The conditions are not known. The information won’t be released until the last minute. In all likelihood, this is a certain form of freezing the conflict, possibly maintaining the Russian presence with the OSCE. Everything is hidden in such a way that it doesn’t create the impression of Ukraine’s victory. With victories there is no need to distract the public using grand PR pretexts such as Savchenko’s release.”
In another pessimistic forecast from Ukraine’s viewpoint, Yuriy Romanenko, the director of the Strategema Center for Political Analysis, said Ms. Savchenko is part of a grander Trojan horse strategy being orchestrated by Mr. Putin, in line with the Donbas special status.
“A generator of chaos with her psychological type and personality, she will be used to break the political system,” he said. “She’s uncontrollable, a fighter and she’s going to swing her sword left and right.”
As perhaps Mr. Putin’s last laugh in the Savchenko episode, a Russian court sentenced on May 26 two more Ukrainian political prisoners – Mykola Karpiuk and Stanislav Klykh – to 22.5 and 20 years imprisonment, respectively, for charges stemming from their alleged involvement in the Russian-Chechen war in the 1990s.