Another “unplanned” visit

MP Nadia Savchenko arrived in Moscow. Her former attorney Ilya Novikov was the first to tweet the news. He also posted on Facebook: “The Supreme Court (SC) of Russia will hear the appeal against the sentence passed against Ukrainians Mykola Karpiuk and Stanislav Klykh. We ask everyone who followed the case, especially journalists, diplomats, and politicians, to come and attend the hearing. If you are not in Moscow tomorrow [on October 26. – Ed.], you still can remind your colleagues of that story once again. After the decision of the SC, the sentence will be deemed to have entered into force, and we will therefore switch our attention to direct lobbying for the release of Karpiuk and Klykh using the Savchenko-Soloshenko-Afanasiev model. We need all the support and attention we can attract.”

Savchenko explained herself that she had set out for Moscow “despite the threat to my freedom and life” to support the Ukrainian political prisoners there. This cause is a noble one. We should welcome all the messages, whether coming from Savchenko or not, which are aimed at supporting the Ukrainian citizens detained in Russia. However, the MP’s role is still not entirely clear. On the one hand, former prisoner Savchenko, released less than six months ago, is (was?) a symbol of all our prisoners in the dungeons of the Russian satrap. On the other hand, Savchenko’s trips to the occupier’s capital to some extent undermine that same satrap’s negative image. Russia appears to be so fair that it allows such a notorious person to freely visit Moscow. So, what war are you talking about? Russia is humanity incarnate! Savchenko has no legal troubles left with the Kremlin, because she has been pardoned. Moreover, she is now an MP. Thus, there are no formal reasons to detain her. However, member of the Crimean Tatar Association of Moscow Aider Muzhdabaev believes that “no Russian federal border guard would have let her in, as she is alleged to be ‘the murderer of Russian journalists,’ without the direct and unambiguous order coming from the director of the FSB who is directly subordinate to the president of Russia. They do not do such things otherwise, no one would have taken responsibility for that.” We would like to add that one of Russia’s charges against Savchenko was that she “had crossed the border illegally.”

There is more to it. Savchenko’s famous appeals for direct dialog with the gangsters who are puppets of the Kremlin even gave rise to all sorts of suspicions at the time. After all, having just walked her first steps on free Ukrainian soil, she effectively gave the aggressor another reason to say that the Donbas puppets were actually a party to the conflict, and therefore the world dealt not with occupation but rather with an internal conflict. On the other hand, just as Savchenko was losing support among the patriotic segment of the population, she began to rapidly gain it among the segment inclined to collaboration. It brought to people’s minds the words of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic’s gangster boss Ihor Plotnytsky who captured Savchenko in the summer of 2014; when testifying at her trial in the Russian city of Donetsk (Rostov Region), he spoke to her in the presence of judges, lawyers, and members of the public, and assured her that they would meet once again as colleagues, that is, politicians. Such spontaneity surprised everyone, even her sister Vira. However, this is just a detail.

Here is another telling detail. As recently as October 26, Russia’s Permanent Representative in the UN Security Council Vitaly Churkin used Savchenko’s name in his anti-Ukrainian argument. Iryna Herashchenko described the situation thus on Facebook: “Churkin did get overexcited from my speech and declared that next year, the world would celebrate the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, which had established the full gender equality in the Russian Federation. Ukrainian soldiers, however, were firing daily on peaceful localities, Ukraine was violating the Minsk Agreements, and Savchenko, once the most famous prisoner of the Kremlin, appealed to the government in Kyiv on her release from prison, calling on them to apologize to residents of Donetsk and Luhansk. Unfortunately, her government still had not complied with this demand put forward by Savchenko...” Thus, Savchenko’s stance and words were at some point translated into Churkin’s speech at the UN.

“I learned that Savchenko was setting out for Moscow from some websites the night before,” Fatherland MP Serhii Soboliev commented for The Day. “As far as I know, other members of our faction, too, found out about it the same way: either on the eve of the visit from the web or even from the news of her arrival there. As for her previous statements, in particular those regarding direct contacts with the enemy militants, our faction made specific official statements that differed somewhat from Savchenko’s views. Our position, I mean the party and the faction alike, is clear and was stated after the signing of the Minsk-2 Agreements. However, Savchenko is not just an MP and a representative of one faction, she is much more. After all, that individual attracted worldwide attention once. I think that Savchenko should do things as she sees fit, as long as it does not harm the national interests. In this situation, no one can stop her from making an effort to support the prisoners.”

AS WE WERE GOING TO PRESS

On October 26, the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the sentence passed against Ukrainian citizens Mykola Karpiuk and Stanislav Klykh, who had been sentenced to 22.5 and 20 years in prison, respectively, for participation in hostilities against the federal forces in the first Chechen campaign as part of the UNA-UNSO organization, Interfax-Ukraine reports. “We uphold the verdict of the Supreme Court of the Chechen Republic in full, and dismiss the attorneys’ appeals,” the ruling reads as announced by a judge. The attorneys asked the court to acquit their clients. “The confessions which were read to the jury had been obtained through torture. Klykh was injected with the ‘truth serum’ and tortured with electric shocks,” his attorney Marina Dubrovina said. She also asked the appeal court to pay attention to the evidence allegedly confirming her clients’ alibis. In turn, the prosecutor said that the verdict was lawful and just.