Ukraine Pilot Plans Hunger Strike over Russia Trial Delay
Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who is on trial over the killing of two Russian journalists in war-torn Ukraine, said Thursday she was going on hunger strike and would refuse both food and water.
Savchenko announced the move in court, saying it was in protest at a decision to adjourn the proceedings until next week, one of her lawyers told AFP.
"The court suddenly announced it would postpone the hearing until March 9 without letting Savchenko deliver her final word," said her lawyer Nikolai Polozov.
He said Savchenko, who is standing trial in the small southern Russian town of Donetsk on the border with eastern Ukraine, had declared she would refuse both food and water "from today."
He said her lawyers would visit her in detention on Friday to try to persuade her to change her mind because a person can usually survive without food and water for no more than five days.
"She simply may not live long enough to attend the March 9 hearing," Polozov added.
"Savchenko is a woman of her word and if she promises something then she would keep her promise. That is why this decision is very sad and lamentable."
Refusing both food and water is known in Russia as a "dry hunger strike" and was a method of last resort for some Soviet dissidents under Communism.
Savchenko, 34, has fasted before to protest the accusations against her but has never before refused both food and water, another of her lawyers, Mark Feigin, told AFP.
She has already refused food for more than 80 days but broke off her hunger strike in March last year because of severe health problems.
Mikhail Fedotov, the head of the Kremlin's human rights council, urged the Ukrainian woman to stop trying to prove the court wrong.
"Ruining your health to prove to our court that it's mistaken is not the right approach," Fedotov said on radio.
"We are not at all interested in seeing her damage her health. On the contrary, we are interested in seeing her return home alive and well."
Lawyer Feigin said the court's decision not to let the pilot speak hardly made any sense, suggesting authorities were deliberately postponing the end of the high-profile trial.
The court, he added, had been expected Thursday to announce the date it would deliver the verdict.
Two journalists from Russian public broadcaster VGTRK -- Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin -- died in shelling in June 2014, in Ukraine's eastern Lugansk region.
Prosecutors say Savchenko was involved in the killing in her capacity as a volunteer in a Ukrainian battalion.
She denies the charges and says she was kidnapped and smuggled into Russia.
On Wednesday, the prosecution requested a 23-year prison sentence for Savchenko and a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,350/1,240 euros).
In an emotional speech Wednesday, she had threatened to start refusing both food and water if the judge took more than two weeks to announce the verdict.
"You would deliver the verdict posthumously, without me," she said in Russian.
Few doubt that Savchenko's fate will be decided in the Kremlin, and Western leaders as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko have called on Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to let her go.
Many experts have suggested that Savchenko would not be forced to serve out her sentence in full and would be exchanged for Russian nationals detained in Ukraine.
Source: Agence France Presse
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