Protesters in Ukraine attack Russian embassy over detained pilot
Hundreds of angry protesters in Ukraine have attacked the Russian embassy, calling for the release of a Ukrainian hunger-striking chopper pilot who has been in Russia's custody for nearly two years.
Outraged by Moscow’s refusal to free Nadiya Savchenko, demonstrators rallied in front of the Russian embassy in the capital Kiev early on Sunday, hurling stones, smoke pellets and eggs at the building. They also broke some of its windows and torched several of the embassy’s cars.
Protesters also carried placards reading “Free Savchenko” and “Cannot break Nadiya.”
Moscow’s authorities have charged Savchenko, currently on trial, with complicity in killing two Russian journalists and illegally crossing the Russian border in June 2014. They say she was a spotter in eastern Ukraine and provided the co-ordinates for the deadly mortar shelling that led to the death of the journalists. The Ukrainian pilot, now 34 years old, was detained a month later over the allegations.
After being on an 83-day hunger strike last year in protest at her detention and the lengthy process of her trial, she went on another strike, a dry one, on Thursday when she learned that a court session to deliver her final statement was postponed from March 3 to March 9.
Savchenko who has denied the charges, believes she was kidnapped and smuggled to Russia.
Following the attacks, the Russian embassy filed a protest with Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and called for a probe into the incident.
Moscow-Kiev ties have been in tatters since the Crimean Peninsula rejoined Russia in a referendum in March 2014 and Kiev commenced a military crackdown on pro-Russian forces fighting for greater autonomy in the Russian-speaking Lugansk and Donetsk in the east of the country.
According to the United Nations, over 9,000 people have lost their lives and some 20,000 have been injured in the conflict since April 2014.
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