Ukrainian deputy Nadiya Savchenko has been detained for allegedly plotting to kill the nation's leaders in a Moscow-backed coup, less than two years after she received a hero's welcome on her return home from a Russian jail.
Ms Savchenko, a former military pilot, was held in parliament by agents from Ukraine’s SBU security service, moments after fellow deputies voted to lift her immunity from prosecution having heard an extraordinary account of her supposed crimes.
Prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko played secretly recorded video and audio material that allegedly shows Ms Savchenko and co-conspirators planning to seize power using weapons acquired from Russian-led separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“Investigators came to understand that this is not some nonsense . . . It is real, military weapons, which were intended to be used to destroy people – both representatives of power and civilians in the city centre,” Mr Lutsenko told parliament.
“It was about delivering terrorist weapons from ‘DNR’ for the destruction of constitutional order in Ukraine, for creating chaos and seizing power,” he added, referring to the separatist ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ that is propped up by Moscow.
Ms Savchenko allegedly conspired with Volodymyr Ruban, who had been hailed for negotiating prisoner exchanges in the east before his arrest this month. He denies wrongdoing.
Mr Lutsenko said the pair delivered a cache of weapons from DNR territory to a Ukrainian army base with the help of officers whom they thought were allies, but were actually part of a sting operation.
Last December, “they tested the weapons at a firing range, where Ruban spoke of a plan to attack the president’s cortege using a high-calibre ‘Topaz’ rifle, which can easily breach armour and is made only in DNR,” Mr Lutsenko said.
Prosecutors claim the alleged coup plotters intended to murder Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and other top officials and storm parliament using mortars, grenades and automatic rifles.
Mr Lutsenko said a video camera hidden in Mr Ruban’s van revealed his visits to bases in DNR territory to collect weapons from Russian military officers.
“So we have facts proving the involvement of the Russian Federation, acting as an enemy of the Ukrainian state and providing arms to people who planned and prepared a terrorist act” to kill people and seize power, Mr Lutsenko alleged.
‘Covert operations’
Ms Savchenko says her suspect conversations and transport of arms were actually part of covert operations for the good of Ukraine, to infiltrate separatist circles, find out about weapons flows in the east and expose scheming officials.
She has called for the overthrow of Mr Poroshenko and his allies however, and called a military coup “the most humane tactic for changing power”.
Ms Savchenko brandished her “Hero of Ukraine” medal in parliament on Thursday, before warning deputies that the nation would sweep them sway unless they implemented the major reforms that people demanded in a 2014 revolution.
The Ukrainian public has little trust in Mr Lutsenko, and many accuse him of helping Mr Poroshenko sideline critics ahead of elections next year.
After being detained, Ms Savchenko (36) hugged her elderly mother and walked through Kiev with SBU agents to their office, accompanied by journalists and supporters.
Ms Savchenko was captured during fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and handed to Russia, where she was convicted in a show trial over the death of two Russian journalists. She returned home to great fanfare in a 2016 prisoner swap.
