Savchenko trial: Ukraine pilot ends hunger strike Published duration 10 March 2016 Related Topics Ukraine conflict

media caption Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko gave a defiant statement in her final court appearance, as Sarah Rainsford reports from Donetsk

Ukrainian officer Nadiya Savchenko, who is on trial in Russia over the killing of two journalists, has ended a hunger strike that she began last Friday.

She is consuming liquid nutrients, called Nutrison, and drinking water.

She had vowed to refuse food and drink pending the verdict. An aide said she changed her mind after a plea by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Ms Savchenko is accused of directing mortar fire that killed the journalists in Ukraine in 2014, a claim she denies.

An aide to Ms Savchenko, speaking to the BBC's Sarah Rainsford outside the prison in Novocherkassk, southern Russia, said she ended the hunger strike and drank two litres of water on Thursday.

But one of her lawyers, Mark Feygin, said he was misled about a letter that he handed to Ms Savchenko, which it turned out was not from President Poroshenko.

image copyright AFP image caption Nadiya Savchenko made a furious closing statement in court on Wednesday

"Thank God Nadiya has stopped her dry hunger strike. Pleas from Petro Poroshenko and everyone who supported her impacted her decision!" another of her lawyers, Nikolay Polozov, said on Twitter.

A dry hunger strike is when someone refuses both food and water.

At the end of her trial on Wednesday, Ms Savchenko vowed to continue with her protest.

She also showed her middle finger to the judges in a crude sign of defiance, said they proved that Russians were "fascists" and described her trial as a "farce".

The prosecutors have asked for a 23-year prison term, and a verdict in the case is due to be delivered on 21 and 22 March.

Western politicians have urged Russia to release her, and the US envoy to the UN described the trial as "farcical".

However, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said negotiations on any decision concerning Ms Savchenko would not happen until after the court's verdict.

Ms Zakharova also accused the West of trying to put pressure on the judges in the Russian town of Donetsk.

image caption Ms Savchenko's mother said she had tried to dissuade her daughter from her hunger strike

Ms Savchenko, 34, who is also a member of the Ukrainian parliament, was captured two years ago while fighting pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

A pioneering female combat pilot in the Ukrainian air force, where she held the rank of lieutenant, she had enlisted in a volunteer infantry unit, the Aidar Battalion.

She is charged with acting as an artillery spotter and directing the bombardment of a rebel checkpoint, in which two Russian state TV journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, were killed

Ms Savchenko says she was kidnapped by rebel fighters at least an hour before the attack in which the Russian journalists were killed, and later handed over to the Russian authorities.

Russian prosecutors say she secretly crossed into Russian territory herself.

Relations between Russia and Ukraine - along with its Western allies - have deteriorated since the events of 2014 in Ukraine.

Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula that March after an unrecognised referendum on self-determination, and is accused of covertly supporting the rebels in the bloody conflict which later divided eastern Ukraine.

Russian media reaction

The prime-time news on Russia's main official TV channel Rossiya 1 began on Wednesday night with the dramatic footage of Nadiya Savchenko making her crude gesture of defiance - albeit with her offending forearm and middle finger blurred out.

The 12-minute report that followed showed Ms Savchenko speaking emotionally during her final address, but also effectively branded her as guilty of, among other things, being complicit in the deaths of the channel's own journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin.

Reverting to language used at the height of the conflict in east Ukraine, Rossiya 1's presenter described her as a "karatelnitsa" or "punisher". That term was earlier associated with the Nazi occupation of the USSR in World War Two.

The channel also condemned "clearly co-ordinated actions" on the part of the West to put pressure on Moscow over the case.

The prominence given to Ms Savchenko last night was a break from the sketchy coverage of the trial since it began last September. The main Russian TV channels have shown little of the actual proceedings and have almost completely ignored the arguments for the defence.

The hostility to her on state TV contrasts with the admiration expressed for her on independent media and by some Russian social media users.

Among her supporters is the well-known journalist Aleksandr Nevzorov, who recently tweeted (in Russian): "In this selfish and base era, Savchenko has shown herself today to be a model of true, beautiful and unexampled heroism."