A member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and Ukrainian MP, Iryna Herashchenko, has been barred from visiting Russia until 2021, the Ukrainian president’s press secretary, Svyatoslav Tseholko, said on Facebook, and MP Oleksiy Ryabchyn on Twitter.
Herashchenko, Tseholko and a group of Ukrainian MPs were travelling to Russia to attend the reading of the verdict in Nadiya Savchenko’s case in Donetsk, Russia's Rostov region.
"Having kept us three hours at the border, Russian border guards did not allow Iryna Herashchenko to enter the Russian Federation. As one of the border guards said, Iryna is a persona non grata in the Russian Federation. Iryna is a member of the Minsk contact group, that is why all the actions of the border guards are a deliberate campaign on not permitting the Ukrainian delegation to attend the trial of Nadiya Savchenko," Tseholko said.
The Russian court is to read the verdict in Savchenko's case on 21-22 March.