MOSCOW, March 22 (RAPSI) – Ukrainian lawmaker Nadezhda Savchenko was arrested in Kiev on Thursday, UNIAN agency reported.
At the moment, she is going to the building of the Security Service of Ukraine accompanied by an investigator, the statement reads.
Earlier on Thursday, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada stripped Savchenko of the parliamentary immunity and approved her arrest and detention.
Last week, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yury Lutsenko signed a recommendation for arrest and detention of Savchenko and submitted it to the Verkhovna Rada for approval. The Prosecutor General accused Savchenko of plotting a terror attack in the house of parliament.
According to investigators, she personally planned, recruited people and gave them instructions to commit the terrorist act in the Verkhovna Rada premises with the use of combat grenades, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General stated.
Savchenko is suspected of involvement in organizing a coup in Ukraine allegedly plotted by Vladimir Ruban, the chief of the Officer Corps Centre for Prisoner Release NGO. He was arrested on March 8. He allegedly planned to commit several terrorist attacks in Kiev.
In March 2016, Ukrainian retired officer Nadezhda Savchenko was sentenced to 22 years in prison for involvement in the murder of two Russian journalists and illegal border crossing. A court in Donetsk, a town in southern Russia, has established that 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.
Later, Russian President Vladimir Putin pardoned Savchenko. In late May 2016, Russia and Ukraine proceeded with the exchange of convicts between the countries, allowing Savchenko to return to Ukraine.