Ukraine's Justice Ministry is not taking part in talks with the Russian side on Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko's fate at this point, Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko has said.

"A process of political negotiations is under way. The Justice Ministry is not taking part in the talks with the Russian side today. The talks are being held at the political and diplomatic levels," Petrenko told reporters in Kyiv on Thursday.

The judicial procedure that the Ukrainian Justice Ministry can use to secure Savchenko's return "is exclusively extradition", he said.

This procedure requires the consent of the person currently in the foreign country, or the consent of her relatives or her legal team, the minister said.

"As of today, this process has not been launched," Petrenko said.

On March 22, 2016, the Donetsk Court of the Rostov region found Ukrainian servicewoman Nadia Savchenko guilty of involvement in the killing of Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin by a group of people by a previous concert on hatred and enmity motives, and sentenced her to 22 years in a penal colony. The court also found her guilty of attempted murder and illegally crossing the Russian border.