Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko returned home to a hero's welcome today after nearly two years in a Russian prison, drawing a line under a damaging diplomatic spat between Moscow and Kiev.

The 35-year-old army helicopter pilot flew home as part of an apparent prisoner swap with Moscow, with two alleged Russian soldiers leaving Ukraine earlier in the day.

"I'm ready to once again give my life for Ukraine on the battlefield," a defiant Savchenko declared as she touched down on home soil, wearing a white T-shirt bearing the Ukrainian trident, a national symbol.

A presidential motorcade was on standby at Kiev's main Boryspil airport to whisk Savchenko to Poroshenko's office where she was to be decorated by the president, reported AFP.

In Ukraine, she has become a symbol of resistance against what Kiev sees as Moscow's aggression in the east and has been elected to parliament in her absence.

While in prison, she launched several hunger strikes to protest her detention, refusing both food and water during her high-profile trial in southern Russia.

She constantly defied the Russian authorities and even raised her middle finger at the court in March. Kiev and its Western allies view 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 in 2014.