Over 2 thousand people including prominent artists, politicians and intellectuals from various countries have signed an open letter to the European leaders appealing assistance in releasing Ukrainian Nadiya Savchenko.
"We appeal to you to take emergency measures on the immediate and absolute release of 34-year-old Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian citizen kidnapped and imprisoned in the Russian Federation for more than 20 months. The Russian authorities have made a mockery of the civil law, international law and their own Constitution," the petition says
The letter notes that the Russian Federation demonstrates contempt to the international society, as well as the Minsk protocol. "So far, all the efforts of the international society have proven fruitless. On 4 March, as a sign of protest against the proceedings in the Russian court, Nadiya Savchenko declared the full hunger strike refusing even water. Our attempt to save her life will test the effectiveness of international diplomacy and our commitment to European values", the letter says.
As of 7 March, the petition was signed by over 2,000 people, including about 270 prominent public figures (writers, professors, politicians, philosophers, artists, Nobel Prize laureates) from 20 countries of the world.
They are: writer, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (Belarus), Svetlana Alexievich, writer, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (Lithuania/USA) Tomas Venclov; writer, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (Austria), Elfriede Jelinek, former Foreign Minister of Germany Markus Meckel, former Ambassador of France to Ukraine Philippe de Suremain, President of the Group "Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe" in the European Parliament, former Prime-Minister of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt; Russian writers Viktor Shenderovich and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, director Agnieszka Holland (Poland), former Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the Russian Federation Luboš Dobrovský, professor of the Department of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University, Mikhail Epstein (USA), writer and journalist Peter Pomerantsev (Great Britain), microbiologist Manfred Böchler (Switzerland)m writer Adriaan van Dis (netherlands) and many others.
The initiative was launched by a group of Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals.