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DONETSK, Russia — A Ukrainian pilot charged in the deaths of two Russian journalists on Wednesday denounced her trial as a farce.

“In Russia, there are no courts and no investigations,” Nadezhda Savchenko

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told the court in the Russian border town of Donetsk. “Here there is the farce of Kremlin puppets.”

Addressing the court, she said: “If you want to show your strength, go ahead. But remember, we are playing with my life. The stakes are high and I have nothing to lose.”

The trial judge said that he would announce his verdict on March 21-22 on her role in the deaths of the journalists in eastern Ukraine.

Photo by Efrem Lukatsky / AP

Prosecutors last week asked the court to convict Savchenko and sentence her to 23 years in prison.

Savchenko, 34, declared a hunger strike on Thursday last week and has a high fever, according to tweets from one of her lawyers, Nikolai Polozov. Her mother and sister were both present at the trial, but a group of Ukrainian doctors were not allowed into Russia to see Savchenko, Polozov wrote.