MOSCOW – Russia and Ukraine appeared close Wednesday to wrapping up a high-level prisoner swap with a Ukrainian helicopter pilot dubbed the country’s “Joan of Arc” traded for two Russian servicemen accused of being members of Russian military intelligence.
The pilot was freed and flow to Ukraine’s capital Kiev, the Associated Press reported, citing an Ukrainian official. The move appeared to set in motion the release of the two Russians, but official details had not been made by either side.
The Ukrainian, Lt. Nadiya Savchenko, and the Russians – Capt. Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sgt. Alexander Alexandrov – were all captured during fighting in southeast Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists have carved out an unrecognized statelet after two years of war with Kiev.
Expected to be used as bargaining chips, all three were given lengthy prison sentences.
A Russian court gave Savchenko 22 years for complicity in the deaths of two Russian journalists by artillery fire in 2014. The Russians were sentenced by a Kiev court on terrorism and weapons charges to 14 years in prison each in April.
Western officials, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, have lobbied Moscow for Savchenko’s release, calling her a political prisoner. Russia, which disavowed any formal connection to Yerofeyev and Alexandrov and said they had joined the separatists to fight as volunteers, also criticized their convictions.
On Tuesday, local media in both Russia and Ukraine citing sources close to the exchange said that a Ukrainian presidential plane had flown to the southern Russian city of Rostov to collect Savchenko and return to Kiev. Meanwhile, a Russian state plane flew from the Kiev’s Boryspol airport to Moscow, carrying Yerofeyev and Alexandrov.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was expected to give a statement confirming the trade later Wednesday, but some officials confirmed the news sooner. Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of parliament from Poroshenko’s party and a former journalist, wrote on Twitter that “Ukrainian Hero Nadia Savchenko is on the way” to Kiev.
Mark Feygin, a lawyer for Savchenko, wrote on Facebook: “Two years ago I promised Ukrainians i would do everything possible to free Nadiya. I am able keep my word. She is on their way home to Ukraine.”
Savchenko, a former Ukrainian helicopter pilot who fought in the Iraq war and later joined a pro-Ukrainian paramilitary battalion, was captured by separatist fighters during a battle near the village of Metalist in southeast Ukraine in June 2014. Three weeks later, she reappeared in Russian custody, where she was charged with directing artillery fire that killed two Russian journalists during the fighting.
Savchenko said that she was kidnapped and spirited across the border, while Russian prosecutors said she had snuck across the border pretending to be a refugee. Her case became a cause célèbre in Kiev, where she was awarded the title Hero of Ukraine and elected as a member of parliament despite being in Russian custody. A Russian court sentenced her to 22 years in prison in March for complicity in the deaths of the journalists in a verdict that Poroshenko called a “kangaroo court.”
