Ukrainian Pilot Savchenko's Request To Replace Judge Rejected
The request of Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko to replace the judge at her trial has been rejected.
The judge, Artur Karpov of Moscow's Basmanny Court, explained his March 26 decision by the "lack of justification" of Savchenko's request to replace him with another judge.
Savchenko's lawyers requested Karpov's replacement, saying that Karpov was included in the list of Russian officials the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on for their involvement to the case of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail in 2009.
The U.S. sanctions bill is known as Magnitsky list.
Savchenko is charged with involvement in a mortar attack that killed two Russian journalists covering the conflict between government forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
She says she was kidnapped by separatists in June and illegally brought to Russia, which she says has no right to try her.
Savchenko has been drip-fed on glucose and vitamins alone during a hunger strike she began on December 13.
She suspended the hunger strike on March 5, citing health concerns but resumed it 11 days later.
Based on reporting by Interfax, TASS and UNIAN
Barring any major developments, that ends the live blogging for tonight.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaking at a joint news conference with Guatemala's Foreign Minister Carlos Raul Morales in Guatemala City:
"Today all efforts should be concentrated on reviving the political process in accordance with the Minsk agreement. But Kyiv is also trying to put the brakes on this process."
Politics professor Nicolai Petro argues in The Guardian that "...if the west is truly interested in the success of Ukraine, then it should recognise that it too has a vital stake in expanding liberal discourse in Ukraine, and in overcoming the nationalistic rhetoric that can only further divide the nation."
He also says:
...Ukrainian elites have a fateful choice to make. They can try to resolve the problem of national unity by adopting nationalistic symbols, rallying people around an “eternal enemy” (Russia) and making the new national identity a litmus test of loyalty. Or, they can forge unity through the incorporation of Russian speakers into a new civic patriotism in which Ukrainian identity is defined by its civic virtues rather than by culture or ethnicity. Simply put, the choice is between nationalism and liberalism.
Both are quintessential European values, but they lead to very different political systems.
Moreover, given Russia’s overwhelming cultural presence in Ukraine, building a national identity at the expense of Russian identity would prove especially difficult, like trying to build Canadian identity around anti-Americanism and a refusal to speak English.
Says Speck:
As the Ukraine conflict continues, the question is whether Germany will be able to maintain a leadership position by permanently moving the conflict from the field of military confrontation, where Russia has the upper hand, to the diplomatic and the economic spheres, where a German-led EU has the comparative advantage.