Plotnitsky asked to be interrogated in the Savchenko case closed to the media.

The head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, Igor Plotnitsky, sent today to the Donetsk City Court, where the case of the Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko is being heard, a statement asking to be interrogated as a witness in a regime closed from the public and the media.

Plotnitsky testified at the investigation, and was expected to appear in court in Donetsk. But the head of the LPR, according to his statement today, “fears for his safety,” so he asks to be interrogated behind closed doors from the public and the media. What specifically threatens him, Plotnitsky did not specify.

Nadezhda Savchenko and her lawyers strongly opposed such a turn of events. The prosecutors supported Plotnitsky’s petition, among other things, justifying this by the fact that the head of the LPR was already “threatened” in the courtroom by lawyer Novikov.

The judges took 20 minutes to think and supported Plotnitsky's request.

Recall that earlier Savchenko’s lawyers and the defendant herself stated that, having seen Igor Plotnitsky on television, she identified him as the head of the group that took her out of Luhansk to be handed over to the Russian FSB officers on the border of Ukraine and Russia in June 2014.

Igor Plotnitsky is included in the list of persons subject to US President Barack Obama's Russia Sanctions Decree (published on December 20, 2014 by the US Department of the Treasury), as well as in the sanctions lists of the European Union, Canada (published in July 2014), Australia , Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine accuses Plotnitsky and Russian citizen Alexander Popov of kidnapping Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko. According to the agency, on June 17, 2014, they attacked the Aidar battalion, captured Savchenko and took the pilot to Luhansk, where she was interrogated for several days in the building of the regional military commissariat, and on June 23 she was taken out of Ukraine with armed escort. The case was initiated under part 3 of article 146 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“illegal deprivation of liberty or kidnapping”), part 2 of article 258 (“terrorist act”) and part 3 of article 332 (“illegal transfer of persons across the state border of Ukraine”).