Russia, Ukraine Agree on Prisoner Swap
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Russia and Ukraine agreed on Wednesday on a high-profile prisoner swap that could help ease negotiations over a settlement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian news media reported that a Ukrainian female helicopter pilot, Lt. Nadiya V. Savchenko, had been released from jail and was on a jet headed for the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
She was to be swapped for two Russian men captured in eastern Ukraine — who the Ukrainians say are military intelligence agents — and flown from there to Kiev in Ukraine’s presidential plane, the New York Times reported.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has refused to acknowledge any ties to the two men, Capt. Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sgt. Aleksandr Aleksandrov.
Ms. Savchenko, who had been a minor celebrity even before the war as Ukraine’s first female combat pilot, had deployed as an infantry soldier with a volunteer unit in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine last year when she was captured by rebel fighters. The Russian authorities say she then escaped from her captors and slipped into Russia posing as a refugee.
A Russian court convicted her of serving as an artillery spotter and directing fire at a rebel checkpoint where a Russian television journalist was killed. She was sentenced to 22 years in prison for murder. Ms. Savchenko vigorously denied the charges and, at one point, went on a hunger strike to protest the trial, which she dismissed as a “farce.”
During her incarceration in Russia, Ms. Savchenko was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament.
Ms. Savchenko’s lawyer, Mark Feygin, reached by phone, declined to comment.
