A deal has been reached with Russia to release a jailed Ukrainian pilot, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, has said, suggesting that she will be swapped for two Russian servicemen jailed in Ukraine this week.

Nadiya Savchenko was sentenced to 22 years in prison in Russia last month for her alleged role in the deaths of two Russian journalists in rebel-held eastern Ukraine. Kiev has insisted Savchenko is a prisoner of war and should be immediately released and her capture and trial became a rallying point for Ukrainians at home and abroad.

“I think we have agreed on a certain algorithm that would allow Nadiya’s release,” Poroshenko said on Tuesday, the day after his conversation with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at a televised news conference in Kiev with the Danish prime minister, he mentioned Monday’s conviction of two Russian officers in Kiev, saying that the verdict “gives opportunities to launch the mechanism of a swap”.

In a sign that the swap could be imminent, a lawyer for one of the men told the Interfax news agency that the two Russians would not lodge an appeal against the verdict.

Savchenko enlisted in a volunteer Ukrainian battalion in summer 2014 to fight the separatist rebels in the Luhansk region. She was captured by the rebels and resurfaced in Russian custody on the other side of the border. Moscow said Savchenko had escaped from the separatists and was caught in Russia, while the Ukrainian said she had been abducted and smuggled into Russia.

Poroshenko would not say when he expected Savchenko to be returned but added that he had told Putin he was ready to send a presidential jet to Russia to take her home.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters earlier on Tuesday that the two presidents talked about Savchenko as well as the two Russian officers convicted on Monday of waging a war of aggression in Ukraine.

A Kiev court sentenced Alexander Alexandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, who were captured last year, to 14 years in prison on Monday after finding them guilty of terrorism and waging war in eastern Ukraine. The two admitted being Russian officers but the Russian defence ministry claimed they had resigned from active duty.

Peskov would not respond to Poroshenko’s statement when contacted by the Interfax news agency, but said only that her future had been discussed during Monday’s call.