Vira Savchenko, the sister of Ukraine’s MP and former fighter pilot Nadiya Savchenko, testified against Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of the so-called ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’ (LPR). Kyiv Prosecutor’s Office reported this on Tuesday afternoon. Savchenko also identified the names of Plotnitsky’s sidekicks who presumably helped him in the kidnapping of her sister and forcibly moving her to Russia in June 2014.
According to Vira Savchenko, one of Plotnitsky’s aides in this illegal act was Vladimir Gromov, the chief of the counter-intelligence service of the ‘LPR.’
On November 10, Nadiya Savchenko and her mother are to testify in the prosecutor’s office as well.
Nadiya Savchenko, the-then pilot of Ukraine’s Air Force, served with one of Ukraine’s volunteer battalions in Donbas during the ongoing conflict; in summer 2014, Russia-backed militants kidnapped her and forcibly moved her to Russia. The law enforcers detained her and brought her to trial. Savchenko was charged with ‘illegal crossing of the Russian border’ and ‘committing terrorist acts against the civilians’, specifically adjusting artillery fire for Ukrainian troops in Luhansk region. The woman spent almost two years in prison cell and survived a number of starvations, protesting against her illegal detention in Russia. In late spring 2016, she was released and came back to Ukraine – now as the Ukrainian MP and member of Ukraine’s PACE delegation.
