Savchenko's lawyer says conditions in hospital worse than jail:
Days after Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko's transfer to a civilian hospital, her lawyer is demanding she be sent back to a Moscow jail.
Conditions in the "special ward" at Moscow's City Hospital 20 are "substantially worse than expected" and "certainly worse" than the medical unit at Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center, attorney Mark Feigin said on Twitter on April 30.
Prison authorities said on April 28 that Savchenko was moved to a civilian hospital because her health had deteriorated.
Feigin said that relatives and the Ukrainian consul have been barred from visiting Savchenko in the hospital, and that the move was making it harder for her lawyers to do their job.
"We will demand her return" to the medical unit at Matrosskaya Tishina, he said.
Savchenko has been jailed in Russia since July, when she says she was illegally brought into the country after being abducted by separatists in Ukraine.
She is charged with complicity in the killing of two Russian journalists who died in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as illegal border crossing.
She denies guilt and conducted a hunger strike for more than 80 days to protest her incarceration in Russia.
U.S. now sees Russia as directing rebels:
The United States is changing its language to reflect the depth of Russian involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The Associated Press reported on April 30 that U.S. officials briefed on intelligence from the region say Russia has significantly deepened its command and control of separatist forces in recent months.
That has led the United States to quietly introduce a new term "combined Russian-separatist forces."
The State Department used the expression three times in a single statement last week, lambasting Moscow and the rebels for a series of cease-fire violations.
AP says U.S. intelligence agencies signed off on the new language last week, after what officials described as increasing evidence of the Russians and separatists working together, training together, and operating under a joint command structure that ultimately answers to Russia.
The shift in U.S. perceptions could have wide-ranging ramifications, including making it harder for Russia to persuade the United States and Europe to scale back sanctions that are hurting its economy, and for Washington and Moscow to cooperate on matters from nuclear nonproliferation to counterterrorism.