Ukraine pilot deal poses questions on EU sanctions

Ukraine has said that the Kremlin is ready to free Nadiya Savchenko, a captured pilot, in a symbolic exchange that could be tied to EU sanctions on Russia.

Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko i made the announcement on Tuesday (19 April) after speaking by phone on Monday with Russian president Vladimir Putin i.

“Based on preliminary preparations it seems to me we have managed to agree on a certain algorithm to free Nadezhda,” he said.

He indicated that he will swap her for two Russian soldiers - Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev - who were captured in Ukraine last year and sentenced this week to 14 years in prison for plotting “acts of terror.”

Poroshenko said their sentence “opens certain possibilities of initiating a swap.” But he added: “I strongly urge no speculation about a time frame for [her] return.”

According to Ukraine and the EU, Russian hybrid forces in Ukraine abducted her from Ukrainian territory two years ago and moved her to Russia. A local court then sentenced her to 22 years in prison in a trial that violated basic legal standards.

According to Russia, she slipped across the border herself and is guilty of helping to kill two Russian journalists.

Mark Feygin, her main legal counsel, told EUobserver in Brussels on Tuesday that she “became a symbol of the war.”

He said that her unusual profile, as a female officer in the Ukrainian air force, captured people’s imagination. He said that her “patriotism”, including defiant courtroom speeches and her hunger strikes, made her a hero in Ukraine.

He also said that his own “political-legal representation” helped to publicise her case in Russia and abroad.

Feygin himself is a former MP from the liberal-conservative Gaydar party who has also represented Pussy Riot, a Russian punk group put on trial for desecrating a church, and the NGO Greenpeace, whose boat, the Arctic Sunrise, was seized by Russia.

The EU foreign service has issued six statements calling for Savchenko’s release. Lithuania and Estonia have imposed travel bans on the Russian officials involved in her case.

US president Barack Obama i, following Feygin’s visits to Washington, also called for her to be freed.

Sanctions

Feygin said, based on his contacts with EU and US diplomats, that Putin is unlikely to let her go for the sake of two soldiers, however.

“Putin sees Savchenko as an instrument. She’s too important for him to release her for just two people. He’s also looking for sanction relief. It will be those two people plus something,” he said.

“He thinks more in terms of interests than of his own reputation,” he added.

“His main interest is [economic] sanctions because they hurt his interests and the interests of the people around him, who are part of the whole vertical corruption structure in Russia.”

He said the EU and US statements on Savchenko have also helped.

“Nobody in Russia knows Federica Mogherini i [the EU foreign relations chief]. But for those people who take decisions in the Kremlin, her statements are important,” he said.

“Putin and the Russian authorities would like these things not to happen. They want to use all the benefits of Western society, to have a connection to the political and cultural elites in the West.”