NEARLY two years of imprisonment, intermittent hunger strikes and a Russian show trial did little to dull the edge of Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko. “I want to thank those who wished me well, because I survived thanks to you,” Ms Savchenko declared upon her return to Kiev on May 25th. “And I want to thank those who wished me evil, because I survived in spite of you.”
In June 2014 Ms Savchenko, a veteran of the Iraq war, was captured by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, where she had been fighting as part of a volunteer battalion. She was smuggled into Russia and arrested for allegedly directing artillery fire that killed two Russian television journalists. She quickly became a cause célèbre; in October 2014, still in a Russian jail cell, she was elected to Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada. Her trial became a diplomatic flashpoint, and her defiance in court turned her into a modern Ukrainian hero.
After a Russian judge sentenced her to 22 years, her lawyers began hinting at a possible swap. The moment came yesterday, when Mr Putin, purportedly at the request of the slain journalists’ wives, pardoned Ms Savchenko—while still insisting that she was guilty.
In exchange, Ukraine released Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov, two Russian soldiers captured on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine last year. Kiev says they were active service members in an elite unit of the GRU, the Russian military-intelligence agency. Moscow claims the men were “volunteers” who joined eastern Ukrainian rebels on their own. In contrast to Ms Savchenko’s triumphant welcome, the two Russians, whose case Russian media had largely ignored, were met only by their wives; the coverage on television was brief. Commentators on Russian TV spun the deal as a sign that Mr Putin “does not abandon his own”.
The timing of the swap is no accident. The European Union is set to review its sanctions against Russia this summer, and Ms Savchenko’s imprisonment was an example of Russian failure to fulfill the Minsk agreements on winding down the war in eastern Ukraine. (Russia has also failed to end its military support for Ukrainian secessionists.) American and European officials have long pressed Russia to release Ms Savchenko. A late-night phone call earlier this week between the Normandy Four—France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia—appears to have sealed the deal. John Kerry, the American secretary of state, says he hopes Ms Savchenko’s return will “provide impetus” for the implementation of the Minsk deal. Mr Putin may be hoping that it generates enough goodwill to roll back the sanctions.
Yet Ms Savchenko is only the most visible of at least a dozen Ukrainian political prisoners being held in Russia. Oleg Sentsov, a film director from Crimea, is serving a 20-year sentence on trumped-up terrorism charges. Two more Ukrainians, Mykola Karpyuk and Stanislav Klikh, are expected to be convicted this week in a similarly flimsy case connected to their alleged participation in the war in Chechnya some 20 years ago. Ukrainian officials hope that another two prisoners will be released later this month: Gennady Afanasyev, who was convicted alongside Mr Sentsov, and Yuri Soloshenko, a 74-year-old engineer convicted on espionage charges.
Ms Savchenko’s return will provide Ukraine’s embattled president, Petro Poroshenko, with a much-needed public-relations victory. But its effects will probably be short-lived. As a returning hero, Ms Savchenko has a chance to change Ukraine’s political landscape. She commands a moral authority unlike any other Ukrainian politician: her status as a Rada deputy will offer a platform to air her views. She will probably prove hostile to any compromise with Russia, including even the Minsk agreements. She may also be repulsed by Mr Poroshenko’s failure to deliver on the promises of the revolution she fought for, such as attacking corruption. Indeed, many in Russia believe that Mr Putin decided Ms Savchenko would be more useful as a thorn in Mr Poroshenko’s side in Kiev than as a prize in Russia’s prisons.