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.
Here's today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
LATEST: Russia has cut its key interest rate to 12.5 percent, from 14 percent, in a bid to boost the economy. (AFP, Bloomberg, TASS)
Russia cuts interest rates:
Russia has cut its key interest rate to 12.5 percent, from 14 percent, in a bid to boost the slowing economy.
Announcing the cut on April 30, the central bank said the decision took into account "lower inflation risks and persistent risks of considerable economic cooling."
It was the third reduction this year after the bank raised the rate by 6.5 percentage points, to 17 percent in December to shore up the rapidly falling ruble.
A rebound in the ruble this year has paved the way for cuts aimed to spur economic activity.
Russia's economy has been hit hard by a sharp drop in oil prices for oil last year and sanctions imposed by the West over its interference in Ukraine.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said gross domestic product dropped by about 2 percent in the first quarter of 2015 -- the first quarterly contraction since 2009 -- and that damage from the sanctions was likely to increase.
The World Bank on April 1 predicted that Russia's economy would contract by 3.8 percent this year. (Bloomberg, AFP, TASS)