Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada MP Nadia Savchenko said she was not questioned but only interviewed by a Ukraine Security Service (SBU) investigator on March 15, contrary to what was officially indicated in her summons.
“I was summoned by investigator Tomosiak to be questioned as a witness. Another investigator conducted an interview with me; he did not question me as a witness, but just interviewed me,” Savchenko told journalists after leaving the SBU office in Kyiv, where she had spent about three hours.
“The administration has been committing crimes step by step. First […] is my exclusion from the [parliamentary] national defense and security committee. I am a member of this committee, not its secretary and not its head, and there is no legal procedure for excluding a member from a committee. This is crime number one,” Savchenko said.
“Crime number two is the fact that the proposal [on depriving her of parliamentary immunity from prosecution] was submitted to the Verkhovna Rada procedural committee in my absence,” she said.
As for the suspicion that she was involved in a coup attempt, Savchenko said, “The accusations concerning preparations for a military coup and an attempt to overthrow this administration are good accusations. They are good in that I am an officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and as an officer of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, I swore to the Ukrainian people to defend Ukrainian land but not the Ukrainian administration. I accuse the Ukrainian administration of committing crimes against the Ukrainian people and causing all the deaths that have taken place during the period of [President Petro] Poroshenko’s criminal governance,” she said.
“If you understand what’s going on, you should understand that if you don’t defend your right to life and freedom, you are going to live worse,” Savchenko said. “If you let yourself be intimidated, you are facing the same fate down the line,” she said.
“I know there are a lot of service members who hear me and who absolutely share my viewpoint that a military coup is quite an expectable and perhaps quite the right event to happen. I understand there are no such people in the administration and in the [military] command,” Savchenko said.
“There are a lot of service members who understand what’s going on. In Russia, I fought external enemies of Ukraine, and in Ukraine, I am fighting internal enemies of Ukraine. I am not afraid, I have never been and will never be,” she said.
Savchenko declined to answer journalists’ questions.
