Nadia Savchenko says she was evacuating injured soldiers when Russian journalists were killed
Ukrainian Armed Forces pilot Nadia Savchenko said at a court session in the Russian town of Donetsk on Tuesday that she had been evacuating injured soldiers from Ukrainian checkpoints in eastern Ukraine on the day when two Russian journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, were killed by gunfire.
"On June 17, 2014, my sister and I were collecting injured soldiers from checkpoints near the town of Schastia using her car," Savchenko said, when answering questions from her lawyer.
"Injured soldiers themselves and soldiers of the Aidar battalion who were helping me do this," said Savchenko, who is suspected of being involved in the murder of Kornelyuk and Voloshin.
Savchenko also said that she had had two radio communication sets as she had been detained.
"I had two radio communication sets and two mobile phones when separatists detained me," she said, responding to a question from her lawyer.
"They detained me at around 10:30 a.m. and then took me to Luhansk," she added.
According to Savchenko, Russian journalists told her about the death of their colleagues in Luhansk.
"I learnt about the death of the Russian journalists from their colleagues when I was in captivity in Luhansk," she said.
Savchenko also said that she suffered a bullet wound to her arm during the detention and was given medical care in Luhansk.