Ukrainian citizen Nadiya Savchenko cannot be retried by a jury in the context of the Russian Constitutional Court's ruling it issued on Thursday, Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin said.

"If a case has already been listed for trial by a panel of judges, it will be heard precisely this way. If it hasn't yet been listed for trial, a claimant is entitled to request that their case be heard by a jury. If the hearing of a case has already been started, as is the case with Ms. Savchenko, it cannot be reviewed by a jury," he said.

"We haven't analyzed Savchenko's case, the Constitutional Court hasn't received a complaint from her," Zorkin said.

Russian investigators believe that Ukrainian Armed Forces officer Savchenko was at a base of the Aidar battalion near the village of Metalist in the Slovyanoserbsk district of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine on June 17, 2014. There she was allegedly conducting secret surveillance and correcting artillery fire targeting a checkpoint of militants from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, as well as civilians sheltering there; among them were three journalists of Russia's VGTRK broadcaster. Two Russian reporters, namely Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, were killed in the attack. Savchenko denies all charges.

Savchenko has been held in Russian custody since July 2014 over her suspected role in the murder of Kornelyuk and Voloshin in southeastern Ukraine.

Savchenko went on hunger strike during a hearing in the Donetsk City Court on December 17, 2015. She said she was going on hunger strike until the end of the trial of her case.