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Russia drops treason charges against Svetlana Davydova | |
(2 months later) | |
Russia has dropped treason charges against a woman accused of phoning the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow last year to warn that Russian soldiers might be heading to eastern Ukraine, her lawyer has said. | |
Svetlana Davydova, 37, was arrested at her home west of Moscow in January on suspicion of making the call after overhearing a soldier’s conversation about troops from a nearby military base being sent to Ukraine. | |
Related: Russian woman faces 20 years in prison on treason charges | |
Davydova was released from pre-trial detention in February after nearly 20,000 people signed a petition to free her. | |
Her lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, said prosecutors had dropped the charges, which could have put her in prison for 20 years if she had been convicted. | |
“Criminal proceedings against Svetlana Davydova have been dismissed for lack of evidence. She is completely cleared of charges of treason,” Pavlov wrote on Facebook. | |
Davydova ruled out seeking compensation for the time she was detained. “I won’t be asking for any compensation. Let any money that I may win in court go to social programmes,” she said, according to news agency Interfax. | |
Davydova’s husband, Anatoly Gorlov, previously told Reuters that investigators from the Federal Security Service , the successor to the Soviet KGB, arrested his wife in January at their home in Vyazma, 150 miles (250km) west of Moscow. | |
Russia adamantly denies Western accusations it is sending arms or soldiers to eastern Ukraine to support pro-Russia rebels fighting Ukrainian government troops in a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 since last April. | |
Pavlov questioned why the case had been opened against his client. “Sometimes we try to find malice in that which can be explained by ordinary stupidity,” he said. |