Donetsk court to announce verdict for former Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko (video)
A court in Donetsk City will announce on Monday the verdict for former Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, accused of participating in the murder of Russian journalists in war-torn eastern Ukraine. The judge who began reading the verdict this morning said in his opening speech that Savchenko, who served in a volunteer Ukrainian battalion at the time, called in the coordinates for shelling that killed the two journalists and several civilians in July 2014, and that she was driven by "political hatred" toward residents of Ukraine's Luhansk region. Savchenko does not admit her guilt but does not intend to appeal the verdict whatever it is. Prosecutors asked for a 23-year prison sentence for Savchenko. Savchenko, who often wears Ukrainian costume in the courtroom, has been openly contemptuous of the judge and prosecutors, denouncing them as "idiots" and raising her middle finger in defiance. She went on an 83-day hunger strike while in detention, then began another this month when the court delayed the reading of the verdic
