Ukraine’s Savchenko Berates Lawmakers in Defiant Speech

KYIV – Ukrainian servicewoman and former prisoner of war Nadya Savchenko used her first day as a deputy in Ukraine’s parliament to chastise her fellow lawmakers, calling them lazy schoolchildren for having betrayed the goals of the country’s revolution that saw the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

"I'm back and will not let you forget - you who sit in these seats in the parliament - about all those guys, who laid down their lives for the country," Savchenko, who spent two years in a Russian prison, said in a defiant tone.

"I tell you that nobody is forgotten, nothing is forgotten. Nothing is forgiven. And the Ukrainian people will not let us sit in these seats if we continue to betray them," she added.

Disappointed in the pace of reforms has been growing in the country of 45 million since President Petro Poroshenko came to power following the 2013-14 Maidan Revolution.

Key pro-Western reformers have been sacked, and vital privatization projects have, for the most part, failed to be implemented. This and the ongoing war in the east of the country has left most Ukrainians disillusioned with the current government.

"One gets the impression that lawmakers are like lazy schoolchildren who shirk their work," Savchenko told reporters after her speech.

The 35-year-old Savchenko, whose bold resistance to her imprisonment in Russia made her a national hero, is seen by many analysts as a last possible guarantor of the revolutionary ideals that were meant to cleanse the country of its endemic corruption and steer it permanently away from Russia’s sphere of influence.

A former army helicopter pilot, she captured while fighting pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region. She was later illegally transferred to a prison in Russia’s Rostov Region, where she was later tried and convicted of murdering two Russian journalists.

The Russian court sentenced her to 22 years in prison, to which Savchenko definitely cursed the presiding judges and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Savchenko arrived home to a hero’s welcome last week after she was swapped for two Russian military intelligence officers who were captured by Ukrainian troops in 2015.

While still in prison, Savchenko was made a deputy of Ukraine’s Rada, or Parliament, by opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.

Upon her return to Kyiv, Savchenko announced that she was willing to run for president if she is nominated.

By Nicholas Waller

Photo: REUTERS/GLEB GARANICH