Weapons seized from former Ukrainian military pilot and lawmaker Nadia Savchenko were in working order and could have been used in an attack on top officials she was alleged to have been plotting, Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios told Novoye Vremya Radio on May 11.
Savchenko is accused of plotting the attack along with Volodymyr Ruban, a former organizer of prisoner exchanges with Russian-led forces in the Donbas, and the Russian occupation authorities in eastern Ukraine. Prosecutors claim the group plotted to violently overthrow the Ukrainian government and assassinate President Petro Poroshenko. Savchenko has been held in custody for two months without bail since March 23.
According to the investigation, Savchenko planned to use mortars, mines, and machine guns to attack lawmakers and blow up parliament.
After testing, prosecutors confirmed that the weapons were operational, Matios said. The mortars and mines were tested at a firing range.
“(The plan was) to shell the Verkhovna Rada from the territory of Trukhaniv Island (an island in the Dnipro River, close to parliament),” he said. “So these are operating mortars, they are suitable for firing.”
Matios said “he got the impression” that the alleged plot by Savchenko detailed by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in parliament on March 22 immediately before her arrest “really would have taken place.”
Matios also said that the same day when he brought the documents with charges against Savchenko and ordering her detention to Lutsenko in parliament in March, he met the lawmaker near the Rada. The prosecutor said he had touched her bag after he noticed her shoulder was sagging with the bag’s weight, and said that he had felt three grenades inside it.
When he asked her to hand over the bag, she refused, Matios said. The prosecutor also said that Savchenko had entered parliament with ammunition and a pistol in her pocket. He did not say which day specifically that had happened, however.
Two days before Savchenko’s arrest in parliament, lawmakers on March 20 adopted a law that banned bringing weapons into the Rada, Cabinet of Ministers or the Presidential Administration.
Savchenko’s press secretary Tetiana Protorochenko denied all of the chief military prosecutor’s accusations. Protorochenko said Savchenko had actually been carrying a box of paper in her bag because her assistant asked that she buy some.
“As far as I understand, it’s impossible to feel (grenades) through that bag,” Protorochenko told the Kyiv Post. “And such people do not have X-ray vision. He’s just making it up. She didn’t have any grenades.”
Protorochenko said investigators could check Savchenko’s blue leather bag and test if it was possible to feel if there were grenades in it.
She also said that ceremonial weapon that belonged to Savchenko would not fit into a pocket. Protorochenko said that typically Savchenko carried her pistol in her bag, but she “would hardly take it” to parliament that day.
She said that the investigation is trying to distract attention from the fact that Savchenko is on hunger strike as “there is no crime in the case.”
