'Jailed pilot freed by Russia, expected in Kiev shortly'

Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko has been freed after nearly two years in a Russian prison and is expected in the Ukrainian capital Kiev shortly, several sources in the Ukrainian presidency have said.
Savchenko was expected to land in Kiev this afternoon, one source told AFP, while two more sources said that the 35-year- old was expected to be decorated by President Petro Poroshenko.
Earlier in the day two alleged Russian soldiers, Aleksandr Aleksandrov and Yevgeny Yerofeyev, sentenced by Ukraine to 14 years in prison for fighting in the rebel-held east, left Ukraine, opening the way for a swap with Savchenko, Yerofeyev's lawyer Oksana Sokolovska said.

"Yerofeyev and Aleksandrov are no longer in Ukraine, which means that the pardoning has taken place," Sokolovska said.
"They have already crossed Ukraine's border."
Savchenko's sister Vira said she was waiting for Nadiya's return home.

"We are waiting for a statement from the presidential administration," she wrote on Facebook, adding: "We simply do not know which airport to go to."
Savchenko was in March convicted over the killing of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine and sentenced to 22 years in a Russian prison.
The crop-haired military helicopter pilot denies any involvement in the shelling death of two Russian state television reporters.

Savchenko - who was fighting in a pro-Kiev militia group against rebels in east Ukraine - insists she was kidnapped by separatist fighters before the journalists were killed in June 2014 and then illegally smuggled to Russia.
In Ukraine, she has become a symbol of resistance against what Kiev calls Moscow's aggression in the east and has been elected to parliament in absentia.
Kiev and its Western allies see Savchenko as the latest pawn in Moscow's broader aggression against Ukraine that has seen Russia seize the Crimean peninsula and fuel the separatist uprising.
Kiev has long been pushing for a prisoner swap to free Savchenko, and Poroshenko said in late April that he hoped she would return home "in a few weeks.