Ukrainian pilot held by Russia found guilty

A Ukrainian pilot in Russian custody has been found guilty of murder, though she claims her detention is politically motivated.

Nadezhda Savchenko was arrested in 2014, charged with killing two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine and illegally crossing into Russia.

Savchenko says she did not murder anyone and maintains that she was kidnapped in Ukraine and brought across the border into Russia before being charged.

Russian news agencies are reporting that she will be sentenced Tuesday.

Savchenko has gone on hunger strikes during her captivity — including one that lasted 83 days — to protest her detention.

In a letter from prison written in response to questions from CNN last year, she claimed she had already been in captivity for an hour when the Russian journalists were killed.

“The ‘rebels’ themselves told me that those journalists came under fire of their own ‘makhnovtsi’ [slang for ‘anarchists’],” she said.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko awarded her the title “Hero of Ukraine,” one of the nation’s highest honors. She was also voted into the Ukrainian parliament in absentia.

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