MOSCOW, January 21 (RAPSI) -Anne Brasseur, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), has asked chairman of the State Duma Sergei Naryshkin for his assistance in releasing Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko from jail, according to a statement obtained by RAPSI on Wednesday.

Savchenko was detained last July in Russia on charges of involvement in the killing of two Russian journalists during a military action over the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

She denies the allegations and says that she was kidnapped in Ukraine and forcibly transported to Russia.

In Ukraine she has been sworn in as a lawmaker of parliament. She was elected as a top candidate in the Batkivshchyna party along with former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The statement says that yesterday Brasseur sent a letter to Sergei Naryshkin in which she describes Savchenko’s condition after the hunger strike as critical. The assembly president recalled that the Minsk agreements between Russia and Ukraine provide for immediate release of all hostages and unlawfully arrested persons.

Brasseur requested that Naryshkin takes measures to ensure her soonest release according to the Minsk protocol or on humanitarian or other grounds. She reiterated that Savchenko was elected to the Ukrainian parliament and is a member of Ukraine’s PACE delegation.

The PACE president believes the issue could further worsen relations between Russia and Ukraine.