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May 31, 2016

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Last year, on May 31, 2016, Ukrainian military aviator Nadiya Savchenko was sworn in as a lawmaker in Ukraine’s Parliament, known as the Verkhovna Rada. She joined as a member of the Batkivshchyna Party, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, former prime minister of Ukraine.

The 35-year-old was greeted as a war hero after her release on May 25, 2016, after over two years in Russian custody (708 days), and in her first appearance at Parliament reminded the lawmakers to urge the return of the “prisoners of the Kremlin.”

“I’m back, and I won’t let you forget,” she said. “I won’t let you, who sit in these chairs in the Verkhovna Rada, forget those guys who died at the Maidan and who currently are dying in the Donbas.”

The same effort that was made to free her should be used to free the remaining prisoners being held by the Kremlin, Ms. Savchenko said. She removed a banner with her picture on it that was draped around the rostrum, and replaced it with pictures of prisoners who remain in the Kremlin’s custody.

“No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten… The people of Ukraine will not allow us to occupy these seats if we betray them,” she underscored

Ms. Savchenko was captured by Russian-backed forces in June 2014 and smuggled across the Ukrainian border into Russia, where she was sentenced to 22 years in prison for her alleged role in the death of two Russian journalists in the conflict zone. She rejected the charge, and often went on hunger strikes and visibly demonstrated her defiance against the Kremlin and the Russian courts.

Ms. Savchenko was freed as part of a prisoner exchange following a pardon by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In exchange, Ukraine released two Russians who were convicted in April 2016 on terrorism charges for fighting alongside separatists and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Since her arrival at Parliament, Ms. Savchenko has been seen by observers as filling a leadership vacuum. She scolded her fellow deputies saying that there is a perception in Ukraine that “legislators are like lazy schoolchildren who neglect their work.”

In late 2016, she left the Batkivshchyna party (some say she was expelled), but remains as a member of its parliamentary faction. This was after she had met secretly with separatist leaders, Alekxander Zakharchenko (Donetsk “People’s Republic”) and Igor Plotinsky (Luhansk “People’s Republic”). Batkivshchyna members considered the meeting as “negotiating with terrorists.” Following the controversy, Ms. Savchenko was stripped of her membership in Ukraine’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). She also launched a political “mechanism” called RUNA, (based on the acronym of Ukrainian People’s Revolution).

Source: “Savchenko sworn in as lawmaker, urges fight for ‘Kremlin prisoners,’” RFE/RL, The Ukrainian Weekly, June 5, 2016.

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