A defiant Nadia Savchenko UKRAINIAN historians may yet be grateful to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. His war against the country has given it a rallying cause. He has also provided it with a national hero, a Ukrainian Joan of Arc. She is Nadia Savchenko, a 34-year-old military pilot who served in Iraq. In July 2014 Ms Savchenko was captured by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, smuggled by Russian security services across the border and put on trial for allegedly directing artillery fire that resulted in the death of two Russian television journalists. Prosecutors are demanding that she be sentenced to 23 years in jail and fined 100,000 roubles ($ 1,400). The fact that she was captured at least an hour before the journalists were killed did not seem to interest the court.
Ms Savchenko’s trial, which has been under way for nearly two years, has also turned into a prosecution of the Russian legal system. She has been made a member of Ukraine’s parliament and appointed to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. Western and Russian intellectuals have signed petitions in her support. John Kerry, America’s…
