A modern martyr

UKRAINIAN historians may yet be grateful to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. His war against the country has given it a rallying cause. He has also provided it with a national hero, a Ukrainian Joan of Arc. She is Nadia Savchenko, a 34-year-old military pilot who served in Iraq. In July 2014 Ms Savchenko was captured by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, smuggled by Russian security services across the border and put on trial for allegedly directing artillery fire that resulted in the death of two Russian television journalists. Prosecutors are demanding that she be sentenced to 23 years in jail and fined 100,000 roubles ($1,400). The fact that she was captured at least an hour before the journalists were killed did not seem to interest the court.

Ms Savchenko’s trial, which has been under way for nearly two years, has also turned into a prosecution of the Russian legal system. She has been made a member of Ukraine’s parliament and appointed to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. Western and Russian intellectuals have signed petitions in her support. John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, called for her immediate release, as did Federica Mogherini, the EU’s high representative for foreign policy. She has several admirers among prominent Russian liberals. Not since Soviet times has a case of a political prisoner in Russia caused such furore.

On March 9th Ms Savchenko, who has been held in prison in the small town of Donetsk, in southern Russia, made a closing statement in her trial: “I accept neither guilt, nor the verdict, nor the Russian court…I want the whole democratic civilised world to realise that Russia is a third-world country, with a totalitarian regime and a petty tyrant-dictator, where human rights and international law are spat upon.” She then leapt onto a bench inside a cage and showed her middle finger to the court’s three judges. She finished off by singing the Ukrainian national anthem.

Since her trial began Ms Savchenko has posed a direct challenge to the Kremlin: either it returns her to Ukraine or she dies in jail. Ms Savchenko is not bluffing: she has been on several hunger strikes, including one that lasted 82 days. On March 4th she refused to take water or food and said she would continue her fast until her verdict. But the court said this would not happen until March 21st. On March 10th she agreed to take water.

Ms Savchenko would not have become a martyr if she had not been abducted. She was one of the activists of the Kiev revolution in early 2014. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea she joined Aidar, one of the most controversial “voluntary” battalions fighting the separatists in the east of Ukraine. Amnesty International, an NGO, claims that Aidar was involved in several human-rights violations, including abductions and unlawful detentions.

But Ms Savchenko may turn out to pose as much of a threat to the Ukrainian government, which has been mired in corruption scandals and internal squabbling, as she does to the Kremlin. If and when she returns to Ukraine she will be given a hero’s welcome. She could well turn into a populist leader who could rally the people against the government.