MOSCOW, April 19 (RAPSI) – Nadezhda Savchenko sentenced to 22 years in prison for involvement in the murder of Russian journalists and illegal border crossing has agreed to suspend her hunger strike after private conversation with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.

According to the official website of Ukrainian President, Poroshenko has informed Savchenko of “moves towards her release” and told her about details of his phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Savchenko was convicted by a court in Donetsk, a town in southern Russia, on March 22.

As the court has established, she 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. Savchenko, who at that time was on active duty in the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a navigator and systems operator of a Mi-24 attack helicopter, enlisted and served on the ground with a volunteer paramilitary unit, the Aidar Battalion, while being on leave.  On the same day, she was captured by members of the Donbass People’s Militia; however, she managed to escape.

Charges of firing at civilians in the city of Lugansk have been dropped against Savchenko because this issue is out of a Russian court’s jurisdiction.