Human rights activists have lost contact with political prisoner Savchenko

The Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, Ella Pamfilova, sent official requests to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) with a request to provide information on the whereabouts of the former Ukrainian soldier Nadezhda Savchenko.

On the eve of the lawyer Savchenko Mark Feigin said that he did not have official information about her whereabouts, but suggested that his client was most likely contained in the detention center of the city of Shakhty in the Rostov region.

On July 30, preliminary hearings in the case of Savchenko, who is accused of murdering two Russian journalists near Lugansk, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, are scheduled to begin in the Donetsk City Court of the Rostov Region.

If she is found guilty by the court, she faces up to twenty-five years in prison.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said the European Union would send representatives to monitor the trials of Nadezhda Savchenko, as well as two other Ukrainian citizens, Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko.