Nadiya Savchenko

Nadiya Viktorivna Savchenko (Надія Вікторівна Савченко; born 11 May 1981) is a Ukrainian politician, former Army aviation pilot in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and former People's Deputy of Ukraine.

She was then the only Ukrainian female soldier in the (2004–2008) Ukrainian peacekeeping troops in Iraq.

Upon returning, she successfully petitioned the Defence Ministry for the right to attend the prestigious Air Force University in Kharkiv, which until then had been open only to men; she was expelled twice during her study there as an unsuitable candidate to train as a pilot but both times was successfully re-instated and continued to train as a flight navigator instead, initially as a SU-24 navigator.

Later she graduated on a Mi-24 attack helicopter in 2009 and served in the 3rd Regiment of the Army Aviation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the city of Brody.

She amassed 170 flying hours as a Mi-24 navigator.

In 2011, the Ukraine Defence Forces published a 20-minute documentary about Savchenko and her military career.

She also featured in a United Nations Development Program as part of a drive to promote equality in the Ukrainian military.

Savchenko found her time in Brody boring and often got drunk.

She was unhappy flying on the Mi-24 attack helicopter, instead of the Su-24 bomber.

Her former commanding officer at Brody, Edward Zahurskiy, described her as a problem officer, who was unstable, insubordinate, and lacked discipline.

In December 2013, Savchenko's 3rd Army Aviation Regiment was ordered to Kyiv by President Viktor Yanukovych.

Savchenko then (without permission from her commanding officer) joined the Euromaidan demonstrations.

Savchenko kept a low profile during the protests; there is a video of her trying to persuade demonstrators not to throw petrol bombs at riot police.

During the 2014 War in Donbas Savchenko, a first lieutenant in the Ukrainian Ground Forces, served as instructor with a volunteer infantry unit, the Aidar Battalion.

In June 2014, she was captured by pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and handed over to Russia where she was accused of having directed artillery fire that killed two Russian state-television journalists at the positions of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.

She was subsequently charged and convicted of murder and illegally crossing the Russian state border despite being abducted from Ukrainian territory one hour before the deaths of the journalists.

One of her lawyers, Mark Feygin, said she was a prisoner-of-war and called on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations to demand her immediate release and that of the other Ukrainian POWs lest Russia be held in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

European Union ministers and their representative regarded her detention as illegal and that her trial did not respect basic human rights, including the right to fair proceedings.

In November 2014, while still imprisoned, Savchenko was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election, and she formally resigned from her military post.

After the president had fled Ukraine in late February 2014, Savchenko and her unit returned to Brody.

Angry over her unit not being deployed in the war in Donbas, Savchenko defied orders and left Brody, and she volunteered as an instructor in the Aidar Battalion.

During the war in Donbas, Savchenko fought as a volunteer in the east of Ukraine in the Aidar Battalion.

On 17 June 2014, at 10:46 am she was captured near the village of Metalist, Slovianoserbsk Raion, by members of the Zarya Battalion, an armed pro-Russian militant group that declared allegiance to the self-declared People's Republic of Luhansk.

On 19 June, a video of her interrogation at an undisclosed location appeared on the internet; she was shown handcuffed to a metal pipe.

On 20 June, the chief of counter-intelligence Vladimir Gromov said that Savchenko was being treated well.

On 22 June, there were media reports that Savchenko had been transferred to Donetsk.

On 8 July 2014, there were media reports that Nadiya Savchenko was being kept in a detention centre in city of Voronezh, the Russian Federation.

On 9 July, Vladimir Markin, spokesman for Russia's Investigative Committee (a federal agency subordinate to the Russian President), confirmed that Savchenko was indeed held in Voronezh where she was facing charges of complicity in the 17 June killing of two Russian journalists, Igor Kornelyuk (a correspondent for All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company), and sound producer Anton Voloshin, who died during a mortar attack on a rebel checkpoint outside Luhansk.

Ukrainian officials said the reporters did not comply with safety requirements and were not accredited.

On 25 May 2016, Savchencko was exchanged in a prisoner swap for Russian GRU officers Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov captured by Ukraine.

However, she was arrested on 22 March 2018, charged with planning a terrorist attack to overthrow the Ukrainian government.

After returning to Ukraine, Savchenko declared her intention to participate as a presidential candidate in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election.

She was released from detention on 15 April 2019.

Savchenko was one of Ukraine's first women to train as a military aeroplane pilot, and is the only female aviator to pilot the Sukhoi Su-24 bomber and the Mil Mi-24 helicopter.

Nadiya Savchenko and her younger sister Vira were born in Kyiv in the Troieshchyna neighbourhood.

Their father was an agricultural engineer, their mother a designer and cargo manager.

Savchenko's father was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union while her mother was an anti-communist.

Her mother and sister Vira said in an interview that she and her sister were brought up in a Ukrainian-speaking household and attending Ukrainian-language schools.

At 16, Savchenko was already determined to become a pilot.

She joined the Ukrainian Army, working as a radio operator with the country's railway forces before training as a paratrooper.