KYIV. Dec 10 (Interfax) - Nadiya Savchenko's dry hunger strike in prison, now in its fifth day, has taken a toll on the way she feels and looks, the Ukrainian parliamentarian's sister Vira Savchenko said.
"I have just visited Nadiya. Five days of dry hunger!!! She looks very bad," Vira Savchenko wrote on Facebook on Monday.
On December 5, Nadiya Savchenko decided to go on hunger strike in order to ensure that her rights and freedoms under the law are protected.
Savchenko said she made this decision because investigators from the Security Service of Ukraine were blackmailing and pressuring her, "demanding that the attorneys immediately read the case materials in order to begin the hearing of the case on its merits immediately, in exchange for the possibility of visits with relatives and assistants, restoration of electronic keys, and the creation of a bank account for registration as a candidate for the post of president of Ukraine."
Savchenko and her lawyers are currently studying the materials in the case against her and Volodymyr Ruban. The investigation into the pair was completed on August 1.
Valentyn Rybin, Ruban's lawyer and the head of Officer Corps, an organization for the liberation of prisoners of war, notified investigators on August 30 that he had finished studying the materials.
Savchenko has been in custody since March 23. The Verkhovna Rada voted on March 22 to grant Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko's request that she be arrested and held accountable.
Ruban was detained on March 8 at a checkpoint in Donbas with an arsenal of weapons that he was allegedly trying to smuggle into the territory under Kyiv's control.
On October 25, Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky District Court extended Savchenko's imprisonment until at least December 23.