Ukraine pilot Savchenko mocks judges in final appearance

A Ukrainian pilot on trial in Russia over the killing
of two journalists has addressed the court and says
she will continue a hunger strike she has been on
for five days.
Nadia Savchenko was making her closing statement
in the trial.
She denies directing artillery fire at the Russian
journalists in June 2014.
She is reported to have refused all food and drink
since 4 March when the hearing was adjourned
before she could make her final statement.
At one point in her appearance on Wednesday, she
leapt onto the bench inside the cage and showed the
judges her middle finger, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford
reports from the court in Donetsk in southern
Russia, where the trial is being held.
She mocked the judges in Ukrainian, saying they
were proving that Russians were "fascists".
A translator read out her formal, final statement in
which she proclaims her innocence and describes her
trial as a "farce".
The EU and US have both called for her immediate
release.
A verdict in the case is due on or around 21 March
but her lawyers have said she will not survive that
long unless she is force-fed.
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She was captured in 2014 at the height of the
fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian
rebels.
She was charged with involvement in a mortar
attack in June 2014 in which two Russian state TV
journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin,
were killed.
Ms Savchenko was accused of handing the location
of the journalists to Ukrainian troops, which she
denies.
The 34-year-old insists the whole case against her is
politically motivated, and she has become a symbol
of Ukraine's resistance against Russia.
She says she was kidnapped by rebel fighters at
least an hour before the attack in which the two
Russian TV journalists were killed.
Ukrainian consuls in the Russian region of Rostov
say judges in the case are refusing to issue any more
permits to visit Ms Savchenko in prison.
Her relatives have also used up all their visiting
permits, meaning a group of Ukrainian doctors en
route from Kiev to visit her will also not be given
access.
Relations between Russia and Ukraine - along with
its Western allies - have deteriorated following
Moscow's annexation of the Crimea peninsula in
2014 and its support for pro-Russian rebels in
eastern Ukraine.