A mother of seven accused of treason for telling the Ukrainian embassy about Russian troop movements was to be released from jail Tuesday, her husband said, though the charges against her remain. Svetlana Davydova, who faces between 12 and 20 years in prison, is being held in the high-security Lefortovo jail in Moscow. Her case has led tens of thousands of people to petition President Vladimir Putin to show clemency.
"The pre-trial restrictions have been changed," her husband Anatoly Gorlov told AFP, stressing however that the charge has not been dropped. "It's too early to rejoice but the kids will see their mother." Davydova was still breastfeeding her youngest child, a two-and-a-half-month-old girl, when she was arrested last month in the town of Vyazma, west of Moscow.
The case has shocked the country, and prompted over 50,000 Russians - including prominent authors and TV celebrities - to petition Putin. "Mr President, we ask you to be merciful towards a woman and mother of a large family," the letter read. "We are hoping that investigation and a possible trial will be as open and just as possible and will be in accordance with the norms of the law."
Among the signatories were Natalya Solzhenitsyna, widow of the Nobel literature prize-winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, film director Andrei Zvyagintsev and actress Lia Akhedzhakova. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the presidency had received the petition. Activists from the liberal party Yabloko picketed the headquarters of the FSB security service, successor to the Soviet-era KGB, whose investigator is in charge of the case. Davydova, 36, who opposes the Ukraine conflict, phoned the Ukrainian embassy last April to allegedly report the military base located near her residential building in Vyazma had emptied, suggesting its soldiers might have been deployed across the border.