MOSCOW, March 23 (RAPSI) - Ukrainian retired officer Nadezhda Savchenko sentenced to 22 years in prison for involvement in the murder of Russian journalists and illegal border crossing, will not appeal for pardon, her lawyer Mark Feygin wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
Feygin has published an application written by Savchenko.
“I forbid you to file an appeal [against the sentence], petition for pardon,” the statement reads.
As a court in Donetsk, a town in southern Russia, has established, Savchenko was responsible for conducting concealed observation and directing mortar fire in an attack against a roadblock held by militias of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic and a group of civilians there, including three Russian journalists, near the village of Metallist, the Lugansk Region, on June 17, 2014. The attack killed Two Russian television journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin were killed during the attack.
Savchenko was arrested in Voronezh, a town in the Russian territory, in July of 2014. The prosecution insisted that Savchenko had been arrested after crossing the border disguised as a refugee in order to plot attacks, what made her a common criminal, not a prisoner of war. Savchenko claimed that she was abducted from Ukrainian territory and that her seizure had happened one hour before the deaths of the journalists.
The ex-navigator pleaded not guilty stating that she had killed people, but only those she considered to be enemies and in self-defense, never with malicious intent. Savchenko refused to recognize the judgement.