Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who became a national hero during her two years of detention by Russia, has been released, her lawyer said Wednesday on Twitter.
“Two years ago I made a promise to the Ukrainian people that I would make every effort to free Nadiya,” lawyer Mark Feygin wrote. “So look. I know how to keep my word. She is coming home to Ukraine.”
Details of her release remained under wraps Wednesday afternoon. The Kiev Post and other outlets reported she was being exchanged for two Russian prisoners held by Ukraine.
The newspaper reported some 100 reporters had gathered at an airport terminal awaiting her arrival Wednesday afternoon.
Russia claimed the 35-year-old was responsible the deaths of two Russian journalists hit by mortar fire at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine and sentenced her to 22 years in prison in a trial denounced by Human Rights Watch as “unsound” and “highly politicized.”
Savchenko denied the allegations. She went on a hunger strike last year to protest her detention, telling CNN in a letter that she had already been in Russian captivity for an hour when the journalists died.
“I have not seen them, and our ways have never crossed. The ‘rebels’ themselves told me that those journalists came under fire of their own ‘makhnovtsi’ [slang for ‘anarchists’],” Savchenko wrote.
Savchenko’s detention helped transform her into a Ukrainian symbol of resistance against Russia, which has been accused of supporting separatists in the Russian-leaning eastern Ukraine and even sending troops of its own to fight the government in Kiev.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko awarded her the title “Hero of Ukraine,” one of the nation’s highest honors. She was even voted into the Ukrainian parliament during her detention.