MOSCOW (Sputnik) – "Visited two cells where six of our prisoners of war are being held," Savchenko wrote on Facebook late on Friday, adding that she had been promised an opportunity "to visit everyone who is on the Minsk lists."
On December 7, 2016, Savchenko visited the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to meet representatives of the self-proclaimed republics of Ukraine’s southeast. The meeting in Minsk caused a political scandal in Ukraine and Savchenko was excluded from the Batkivshchyna Party and Rada's Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) delegation.
"We do not exclude that the goal [of the shelling] was to sabotage her visit of Ukrainian prisoners," the DPR military command said in a statement quoted by the Donetsk News Agency on Friday.
In May 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to pardon Savchenko, who was convicted in Russia of being an accomplice to the murder of two Russian journalists in Ukraine’s troubled southeast (Donbas). She was subsequently delivered to Ukraine.
In the summer of last year Savchenko suggested that Kiev started direct talks with DPR and LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic). She announced her readiness to be a negotiator, stressing that she supported pardoning members of Donbass militia, which has been fighting against Ukrainian military forces that launched a special operation in the region in 2014.
