Savchenko on Her Future Plans: Help for Prisoners, Reforms for the Army

On Friday, May 27, 2016 Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko gave her first press conference upon returning to Ukraine after being imprisoned in Russia. She shared her geopolitical insights, outlined her competencies and future plans, and explained why she walked barefoot when she arrived to Ukraine on May 25.

Savchenko said she believed Crimea would eventually be a part of Ukraine again — returned either by military force or by persuasion of the local population. She said that many World leaders reached out to her while she had been in prison and she was planning to keep in touch with them to work together on the return of Ukrainian territories and release of political prisoners.

Speaking of her future work in the Parliament, Nadiya said she was not yet sure which of the existing committees she would join. She explained the two structures she knew from the inside were army and prison, so she would like to make herself useful by applying this knowledge to improve logistics in the army and to eliminate corruption.

When asked about the Aidar volunteer battalion where she fought prior to imprisonment, Savchenko said that the volunteers "were not saints", but they did not deserve as much criticism as they got. She said that many people in the battalion were very patriotic, and that herself and her brothers-in-arms did what they had to in the circumstances of the war. She underlined that she was a soldier, not a killer. She also regretted ever getting caught and said that if she had a chance then to end her life with a hand grenade, she would have done it.

Explaining why she took her boots off at the airport and emerged in front of the journalists barefoot, Savchenko said that her boots were too warm and besides she just wanted to feel the grass with her feet after a long time in prison.

Source: Tetiana Kusok, Ukrayinska Pravda