KHABAROVSK (Sputnik) — Earlier this week, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. The US top diplomat discussed the Syrian peace process, as well as the Ukrainian crisis with Russian authorities.
"He did not come in order to pressure Putin over Savchenko, because the Savchenko issue could hardly be made the cornerstone of such negotiations," Peskov said on the TV Tsentr television channel.
On Friday, Sergei Ivanov, the chief of staff of the Russian presidential administration, said that Savchenko could be exchanged for two Russian citizens prosecuted by Kiev if it complied with national laws and upon a corresponding decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Tuesday, Savchenko received a 22-year prison sentence after being convicted in a Russian court of directing artillery that killed Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin in eastern Ukraine on June 17, 2014.
