Savchenko's lawyer says his client is in critical condition
According to Nadiya Savchenko's lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, his client is in critical condition and her dry hunger strike has led to severe health complications.
“The condition of her already harried health is getting worse. This affects her old problem of kidney stones, which is aggravated by stress to the body in the form of hunger (especially dry). Her high temperature has not fallen for several days which, at a minimum, reflects a serious inflammation of her internal organs,” Polozov wrote on Facebook.
Savchenko has refused to let Russian doctors examine her, and Russian authorities have made it clear that Ukrainian doctors are not allowed to attend to Savchenko due to “the offensive language used in her address to the court”, as explained by the Russian Foreign Ministry, referring to the court proceedings on March 9th in which Savchenko gave the judge the middle finger.
Nadiya Savchenko has been charged with the murder of two Russian journalists. 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.
On March 2nd, the prosecutor’s office requested that she be sentenced to 23 years in a penal colony plus a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,400).
Savchenko declared a dry hunger strike on March 3rd after the Donetsk City Court in the Rostov region announced that she would not be given a chance to make her final closing statement during a court hearing.