Pilot Savchenko transferred to prison medical unit
MOSCOW. Jan 29 (Interfax) - Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who is suspected of abetting the killing of Russian journalists, is being transferred to a medical unit in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison due to weight loss, her lawyer Ilya Novikov told Interfax on Thursday.
Kristina Belousova, an official with the Federal Penitentiary Service, has confirmed Savchenko's transfer.
"Because Nadezhda Savchenko has refused to eat any food for a long time, the Federal Penitentiary Service has made a decision to send her to a medical unit for an additional evaluation and further observation," Belousova told Interfax on Thursday.
Belousova said doctors find Savchenko's condition satisfactory and "she is under constant medical observation and she is receiving treatment."
At the same time, doctors regularly talk with Savchenko, saying she should stop her hunger strike and explaining the possible implications to her," Belousova said.
It was reported earlier that Savchenko fought with the Aidar volunteer battalion in eastern Ukraine. Novorossiya militia captured her in June 2014 near the town of Shchastya, a suburb of Luhansk. It was announced on July 8, 2014 that she was kept at a Voronezh pre-trial detention facility in Russia.
The Russian Investigative Committee claimed earlier that Savchenko had crossed the border without documents under the guise of a refugee and been detained later for identification. The identification procedure revealed that she had been suspected of facilitating the murder of Russian TV journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin near Luhansk. On July 9, 2014, Savchenko was indicted as an accomplice to murder.
Savchenko has denied her guilt and claimed that she was abducted from Ukrainian territory.
She was taken to a pre-trial detention center in Moscow on September 24. The Basmanny district court in Moscow ruled on October 27, 2014 that she be kept in custody until February 13, 2015.
Savchenko, who went on hunger strike in mid-December 2014, was elected to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, as a member of the Batkivshchina party led by Yulia Tymoshenko in the snap parliamentary election on October 26, 2014.