So, what do you do if you're a Ukrainian citizen kidnapped on Ukrainian soil and forced to endure a ridiculous show trial in Russia?
Well, if you're a tough-as-nails military pilot like Nadia Savchenko, you stand up and you flip the bird at the court.
You turn your show trial into your show with an obscene gesture seen round the world.
In fact, it's hard to imagine a more appropriate reaction.
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Because even by Russia's bizarre, arbitrary, and Kafkaesque standards of justice, the Savchenko case stands out as particularly outrageous.
Savchenko is essentially a foreign hostage being held by a criminal regime.
She's a prisoner of war being prosecuted as a common criminal on absurdly trumped-up charges by a country that claims it isn't even involved in the war in which she was abducted.
She faces 23 years in a Russian prison for doing her job as a Ukrainian soldier -- defending her country against an illegal Russian invasion.
How can you respond to that -- except to flip the bird
Because everything about her case has been a lie.
But it's a lie that will come back to haunt the Kremlin.
Savchenko is on a dry hunger strike, and if she dies in prison, she'll become yet another potent symbol of the senseless cruelty of the Putin regime.
And if she is freed, then she'll return triumphantly to Ukraine as a hero -- as the strong and defiant woman who flipped the bird at a brutal bully and walked away unscathed.
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