A UKRAINIAN pilot shot down during fighting has been arrested in Russia and charged with abetting the killing of two Russian journalists, Moscow announced today.

Nadezhda Savchenko’s plane was downed while flying over Ukraine’s war-torn east.

Russian state channel VGTRK journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin were killed on June 17 when they came under mortar fire near the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said that Ms Savchenko is suspected of tipping off Ukrainian troops as to the whereabouts of the journalists as well as other civilians in a rebel-held area.

Investigators said that she was a Ukrainian air force officer but took leave earlier this summer to join the paramilitary Aidar battalion led by Serhiy Melnichuk.

The battalion was set up by extremist elements who had dominated events in the Maidan square in Kiev when the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown.