Nadiya Savchenko – Fast Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadiya_Savchenko: “Russia’s Investigative Committee insists she crossed the border voluntarily, without documents and in the guise of a refugee.[20] Russia’s pro-Kremlin TV channel NTV, however, reported on June 20 that Savchenko had been captured by “rebels” and then handed over to the Russian authorities.[21] Ukrainian officials said she had been illegally taken to Russia by Russian intelligence services in collaboration with pro-Russian rebels.”

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http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1437143184 – 7/18/2015 – “New attempt to keep Nadiya Savchenko trial secret” — “Russia is insisting on holding the trial of captured ex-pilot Nadiya Savchenko in a Russian city bordering the area of Ukraine under Kremlin-backed militant control. There are no legitimate grounds for this move which will seriously hinder access to the trial, and could, Savchenko believes, put her mother and sister in danger. Her formal appeal* to Russia’s Prosecutor General to move the trial to Moscow where all investigative activities and assessments were carried out has effectively already been rejected. One of her lawyers announced late on Friday afternoon that Savchenko has already been moved from the remand prison in Moscow and is on her way to the Rostov oblast.”

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http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1435707020 – 7/2/2015 – “Savchenko material shows how Russia concocted ‘case’ and what it can’t conceal” – ” The key problem in the investigators’ case is Savchenko’s irrefutable alibi however there are also a number of other obvious flaws in their version which do not go away despite being assiduously ignored..”

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Posted to YouTube 7/7/2015

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This patriot, made a Hero of Ukraine by President Poroshenko on March 2, this Joan of Arc detained in spite of the diplomatic immunity to which she has been entitled since her election to the Rada and as Ukraine’s representative to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, has become simultaneously the symbol of Putin’s arbitrary exercise of power and of Ukrainian resistance.

As Russia celebrated with great pomp and ceremony the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, one might have hoped that Putin would make a gesture.

He did not.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/free-nadyia-savchenko_b_7255318.html – 5/11/2015

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Here in Moscow she has been charged as an accessory to murder, linked to the death of two Russian journalists covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine between the rebels and government troops.

But the BBC has seen mobile phone data from the day they died, that her lawyers argue proves her innocence.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31760381 – “Nadiya Savchenko: Ukraine resistance symbol in Russia.”  – 3/6/2015.

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Imprisoning a Ukrainian officer, who disappeared while on duty last month in the battleground region of Luhansk, will make it hard for Russia to maintain its claim that it is not in league with the separatist rebels. According to the Ukrainian government, the rebels captured Savchenko in June and illegally smuggled her across the border into Russia, where authorities not only arrested her but took her hundreds of miles to the city of Voronezh, a provincial capital in the heartland of western Russia. Diplomats and top officials in Ukraine, as well as their U.S. allies, have already cited the case as among the clearest pieces of evidence so far that Russian security services are working in concert with the rebel fighters. That means the case is sure to bolster the Western argument for another round of sanctions against Russia this month.

http://time.com/2976146/the-strange-case-of-vladimir-putin-and-the-ukrainian-pilot/ – 7/11/2014.

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Russia agreed to immediately free all hostages and illegally held persons. Yet Russia and the separatists it backs continue to hold at least 500 hostages. They include Savchenko, as well as Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, both of whom were captured by separatists on Ukrainian soil and illegally transported against their will to Russia.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/response-we-people-petition-nadiya-savchenko – 11/21/2014.

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We continue our publication of the prison writings delivered to us by Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot who was abducted by pro-Russian separatists on June 18, 2014, and who has been in prison ever since. La Règle du Jeu, in partnership with Kyiv Post, Ukraina Pravda, The Huffington Post/WorldPost, and other magazines and newspapers, is launching a double appeal: Do not forget Nadiya, and do everything you can–everything–to obtain her release.–Bernard-Henri Lévy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernardhenri-levy/nadiya-savchenkos-letters_b_7264172.html – 5/12/2015.

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When it comes to the perception of brute force in power, the language play in the invention of the term “21st Century Neo-Feudalism” proves more convenient than earnest and popular political science on the matter, so suggests a cursory glance at related Google search results, which frequently lists this blog as the term’s proponent. Nonetheless, as witness through Internet-borne media to Nadiya Savchenko’s abduction and imprisonment in relation to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “hybrid warfare” (by proxy thugs) in Ukraine, the term would seem well applied.

Typing here from the sidelines, the lawlessness of the feudal world — in effect, the caprice of the senior mafia running the show — concentrates power in a titular head, who may actually have it, and a surrounding bulwark of favored and patronized nobility.  Against that model, the lawful of the democratic world — also argumentative, bureaucratic, responsible, responsive — tend to distribute power across a magnificent quilt of private and public and local to international interests.  Adventurous and bright, the very tough Nadiya Savchenko appears to have managed to become selected for being trapped between the two worlds.

Putin’s message: I have captured and caged the brave Ukrainian bird; come and get her.

That’s absolute power.

I have long suggested here and elsewhere that that kind of power becomes the power to make others suffer with impunity — and Putin, among others, have demonstrably got it.

What power have the democracies against “political absolutism”?

The power of international law as invested in western institutions?

Talk, talk, talk.

The ogre keeps the stolen bird caged.

Old tweet: “Putin, Assad, Khamenei — together they are defending absolute power.”

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Posted to YouTube 7/15/2015

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Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue slaughtering or displacing all Syrians who disagree with his ownership — absolute control — of Syria and dominion over the lives and property of all who inhabit his realm?

Nothing has diminished his power where he may still project it, and, in fact, the political theater produced by “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and to which I refer as “Assad vs The Terrorists” has positively contributed to his power.  Assad appears to have forked Obama’s policy on Syria (whatever it might have been), for the American has had to have his military fly sorties against Daesh, everyone’s enemy, but also — and mostly so — Assad’s enemy.

Assad didn’t always have “The Terrorists”, but through sufficient selective bombing and fighting, he achieved the incubation of the “Al-Qaeda Typicals”, and now he has them, and he has got Washington bombing them at Washington’s expense!

Oh, the glory.

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Posted to YouTube 7/18/2015

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei too has gathered power unto himself without limit, and he too appears to have going “hybrid warfare” and “war-by-proxy” in several districts, from Yemen today to the Gaza Strip, and these too continue with just enough impedance to hold them in place.  If Tehran keeps its part of the “nuclear deal”, it will find itself with tens of billions of new or recovered dollars to earmark for throwing its weight around the region.

Why not?

Khamenei has met no lasting opposition within Iran — the world knows how that works — and within the region, whether manipulating the Al-Qaeda Typicals or the Hezbollah Virulence, sending Revolutionary Guard to battle Daesh with Iraq’s Shiite militia or cheering the Houthis as they bring wreckage and ruin to Yemen, none have yet curtailed his influence or meddling.

No “off button”; no “reset”; no brakes: that’s theocratic dictatorship — and that’s been Khamenei’s thing for a while now, and it’s working.

It would appear that “absolute power” needs no ethical, humanist, moral, or religion defense, for whether practiced by Putin, Assad, or Khamenei — different talks: same walk — all that is needed is unyielding relentless assertion.

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What does Putin say?

I have got your most ambitious, darling, and high flying bird in my cage.

What does Assad say:

I have committed crimes beyond imagination and destroyed children’s educations, their homes, and their parents’ lives by the millions — but I am still here, President of Syria.

What does Khamenei say:

Khamenei doesn’t say anything, for Khamenei laughs.

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