Today marks fifth anniversary of Oleg Sentsov arrest

Oleg Sentsov is a Ukrainian film director, screenwriter and writer, civil society activist. Sentsov was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine.

The filmmaker was arrested in Crimea in May 2014. In August 2015, a Russian court sentenced him to 20 years in maximum security penal colony on charges of plotting terrorist attacks in the annexed Crimea. Sentsov is serving his sentence in Labytnangi town in the far north of the Russian Federation.

In May 2018, Sentsov went on a hunger strike demanding to release all Ukrainian political prisoners of the Kremlin. He was refusing to eat for 145 days and announced the end of the hunger strike on October 6 due to the threat of forced feeding.

Today, the rallies in support of Oleg Sentsov will be held in Kyiv.

During the performance “Do you remember?”, the activists will send each embassy a letter from the Kremlin’s Ukrainian hostages and remind the Council of Europe member states that any dialogue with Putin must begin with the demand to release Oleg Sentsov and all Ukrainians, who were jailed illegally in Russia and in the occupied Ukrainian territories.

According to the organizers of the global action #SaveOlegSentsov, at least 98 Ukrainian political prisoners are being held now in the Russian Federation and occupied Crimea, about 120 prisoners of war and civilian hostages are held captive in the cellars in the occupied Donbas and 24 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been jailed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.

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