Savchenko lawyer calls international organizations to respond to Savchenko's sister ban to enter Russia

Savchenko's sister Vira was meant to appear this week as the main witness for the defence against charges of murdering two Russian reporters, which could bring a 20-year jail term for the Ukrainian servicewoman. The case has been condemned as a miscarriage of justice by international human rights groups and governments which have called for her release. Vira Savchenko wrote on Facebook that Russian authorities told her at the border that she had been banned from entering the country until 2020, by orders of the Russian Federal Security Service. A spokesman for the FSB in Moscow refused to comment. Her lawyer Mark Feigin tweeted that "Nadia Savchenko has now been deprived of her right to a defence." The 34-year-old helicopter pilot has denied accusations that she helped direct an artillery strike that killed two Russian state television reporters in eastern Ukraine in June 2014. She has insisted she was captured by separatists in Ukraine and illegally taken into Russia. Her defence reported they had evidence of her already being in militant captivity at the time the Russian journalists were killed. Savchenko had previously gone on a hunger strike to protest her detention. She was also elected in absentia to Ukraine's parliament last year. Nadia Savchenko and her defence team have urged the international organizations to interfere into the situation with a ban on her sister from entering Russia, her lawyer Mark Feygin tweeted on Wednesday. According to him, Nadia Savchenko believes a five-year ban for her sister to enter Russia "not only an infringement on her rights for protection and pressure, but also a deprival of her family ties." "Nadia herself and her defence team call on international organizations to interfere in the situation," Feygin stressed.