TWO jailed Russian citizens flew home from Ukraine yesterday after being exchanged for a neonazi militiawoman imprisoned in Russia.

The plane carrying Evgeny Erofeev and Aleksandr Aleksandrov landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport in the afternoon as billionaire Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sent his personal aircraft to fetch Nadezhda Savchenko from Rostov-on Don.

On her arrival she burst into song and chanted: “Glory to Ukraine!”

The former Ukrainian air force pilot had been pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin that morning.

The two Russian ex-servicemen were taken prisoner in Ukraine while fighting as volunteers for anti-fascist forces in the eastern Donbass region.

They were paraded on TV along with their military ID cards and later sentenced to 14 years for terrorism.

Ms Savchenko joined the neonazi Aidar Battalion to fight in the Donbass following the 2014 Maidan Square coup.

She was captured by the Donbass forces that summer but later escaped and made her way into Russia — claiming to have been bundled across the border — where she was arrested.

She was convicted of complicity in the murder of Russian journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin near Lugansk while acting as a helicopter-borne artillery spotter.

Mr Putin met the victims’ families to thank them and express hope that the decision would “help to alleviate the stand-off in the conflict zone and help to avoid such terrible and pointless losses.”

Ukrainian powerbroker Viktor Medvedchuk, who was present at the meeting, said the swap “could be a step towards restoring relations between Ukraine and Russia.”