Trending Ukraine: Savchenko has been released from jail

Discover the latest updates on Ukraine in trending World News as of May 25, 2016.

• Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian helicopter pilot controversially jailed in Russia, has been released in a prisoner exchange that may bring fresh diplomatic impetus to ending the war in eastern Ukraine (Roland Oliphant, The Telegraph)

• Nadiya Savchenko, 35, barefoot – it was unclear why – and wearing a T-shirt depicting the Ukrainian coat of arms, emerged from the terminal at Kiev’s Boryspil airport to cries of “hero” from a crowd of supporters, among them her sister and mother. (Maria Tsvetkova and Pavel Polityuk, Reuters)

• The 35-year-old army helicopter pilot was released as part of an apparent prisoner swap with Moscow, with two alleged Russian soldiers leaving Ukraine earlier in the day, according to an official in the Ukrainian presidential administration. (Voice of America)

• The Russian Ministry of Defense has refused to acknowledge any ties to the two men, Capt. Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sgt. Aleksandr Aleksandrov. The Ukrainian authorities placed them in a glass cage during a trial in Kiev, as living examples of “the little green men,” or soldiers deployed without insignia on their uniforms, seen by the thousands in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. A Ukrainian court sentenced both of the men in April to 14 years in prison on terrorism-related charges. (Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times)

• Nadiya Savchenko was met by Ukraine’s president at Kiev’s Borispol airport, where she made a passionate speech sarcastically thanking those “who had wished me evil”. “Through you I survived,” she said. (Alec Luhn and Luke Harding, The Guardian)

• Nadiya Savchenko’s release came a day after Putin, Poroshenko and the leaders of France and Germany spoke by telephone about ways to settle the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Western leaders had long been calling for Russia to free Savchenko. (Efrem Lukatsky and Nataliya Vasilyeva, Associated Press)

• “We will return Crimea and Donbas under Ukrainian sovereignty, just as we have returned Nadia,” said Poroshenko, referring to the Crimean peninsula, and to the Donbas region of east Ukraine, which is under the control of pro-Russian separatists. (Andrew Roth, the Washington Post).

Mariya Nesheva, EMPR

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