Poroshenko: Savchenko agreed to end her hunger strike
Nadiya Savchenko has agreed to stop her hunger strike after speaking over the phone with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
“Together with Nadzheda Savchenko’s mother, Maria Ivanovna, and her sister, Vera, we asked Nadiya to stop her hunger strike. Thankfully, she agreed,” Poroshenko wrote on Twitter.
Savchenko had been on a dry hunger strike for two weeks.
Earlier, the Ukrainian President said that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin “seemed to manage” to agree to preliminary terms for the release of Savchenko.
"Yesterday's conversation with Putin was on my initiative, and on the basis of preliminary developments, it seems to me that we were able to agree on a specific algorithm for the liberation of Nadiya,” Poroshenko said.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the words of the Ukrainian President, with Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov simply stating that the matter was discussed.
There have been reports that Savchenko will be exchanged for two Russian soldiers being held in Ukraine, Evgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov. The two were found guilty on Monday and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Last month, a Russian court found Savchenko guilty of complicity in the killing of two Russian journalists and sentenced her to 22 years in prison.
The judge in the Russian town of Donetsk said Savchenko had been driven by "political hatred".
"A propaganda machine is at work here, absent of justice and freedom," Savchenko’s lawyer wrote on Twitter.
It is widely believed that Savchenko was in fact captured by Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) separatists in eastern Ukraine and was illegally transported to Russia, where the case was fabricated against her.
Savchenko was elected to the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada in absentia in October of 2014 and became an official delegate of the PACE several months later.
Rallies in support of her immediate release have taken place in Ukraine, Russia and other countries around the World, and many Western leaders consider the case to be little more than a show trial.