Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada registered a draft law imposing sanctions on the people responsible for the groundless detention in a Moscow detention centre of Nadya Savchenko – deputy to the Ukrainian Parliament and Ukraine’s delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
Savchenko was abducted by separatists and handed over to the Russian administration of justice. Despite the absence of evidence, she was accused of involvement in the killings of civilians, including two Russian journalists. The findings, indicating that at the time of their death the Ukrainian was already in the hands of the opposing party, do not serve to discourage the Russians.
Nadiya Savchenko
Ukrainian Lieutenantkidnapped by FSB
Savchenko participated in the anti-terrorist operation in the East of Ukraine as a volunteer in the territorial defence battalion ‘Aydar’ and was taken prisoner by pro-Russian terrorists near the village of Metallist (Lugansk Province) on 17 June, 2014.
The list proposed by the deputies comprises 35 names. They have all been taken from the “Savchenko List” compiled by the Open Dialog Foundation. It is for the second time that our list has been appreciated by Ukrainian authorities and used in their work. Earlier, we received thanks for our contribution towards the work aimed at releasing Nadiya from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The draft law was supplemented by an appeal to influential international and domestic institutions to apply similar sanctions against the people on the list, a fragment of which we can cite below:
“(…) On 24th February, thanks to the initiative of the Open Dialog Foundation, the so-called ‘Savchenko List’ was published. It is a list of persons responsible for the unlawful imprisonment in the Russian Federation of Ukraine’s deputy, permanent delegate to PACE, Nadya Savchenko. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada called upon the Security and National Defence Council to impose personal sanctions on those responsible for the unlawful imprisonment in the Russian Federation of Ukraine’s deputy Nadya Savchenko. In that connection, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada calls on the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, the United Nations, the US Congress, and parliaments and governments of other democratic states of the world to take immediate steps to impose sanctions on the persons [included in the list]”.
The full text of the law and the annexes, in their original versions, are available to view on the website of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada: rada.gov.ua