MOSCOW, July 24 (RIA Novosti) – Ukraine is currently in a state of civil war, Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko said in an interview to Russia’s LifeNews on Thursday.
“People rise up. When they rise up for the sake of what they believe in and when these beliefs contradict each other, then this is called a civil war,” Savchenko said.
Nadezhda Savchenko is currently held in custody in the Russian city of Voronezh. Russian investigators claim that she was a fire spotter during a mortar attack near the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk on June 17. As a result of this attack, two Russian journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, were fatally wounded.
In her interview with LifeNews, Savchenko said that she would never point a gun at civilians.
“I wasn’t aiming at them … I am charged with killing Russian journalists, but I would never do it. I would never shoot at an unarmed person,” Savchenko added.
In mid-April, Kiev launched a special military operation against independence supporters in eastern Ukraine. Hundreds of people, including civilians and journalists on duty have died in the region over the past few months.
Moscow has repeatedly called on Kiev to end the bloodshed and resolve the conflict through peaceful dialogue.
