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Russia’s investigators say no grounds for Ukrainian woman pilot’s release from custody

Earlier Moscow’s Basmanny Court has prolonged the arrest of Nadezhda Savchenko till February 13

MOSCOW, October 30. /TASS/. Russia’s Investigative Committee believes there are no grounds to release Ukrainian woman pilot Nadezhda Savchenko accused of complicity in the killings of Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine from custody.

“I can say for sure that we have enough evidence confirming Savchenko’s guilt, that’s why today there are no grounds to release her from custody,” Alexander Drymanov, the acting head of the Investigative Committee department for crimes related to the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare, said on Thursday.

Drymanov attended a meeting of a committee for public support of Ukraine’s southeast in Russia’s upper house, the Federation Council.

Final charges will be brought against Savchenko after all the expert evaluations are completed, he said.

According to the investigation, during hostilities near Lugansk last July Savchenko, the navigator-operator of a Mi-24 helicopter, joined the Aidar battalion. She spotted the location of a group of Russian journalists from the VGTRK television channel and other civilians near Lugansk and transmitted the coordinates to a mortar battery. The mortar shell fired at the target killed two Russian journalists - Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin.

Lately, she was brought to Moscow for psychiatric examination.