Kira Yarmysh: People Usually Avoid the Word “Dying”

Kira Yarmysh
Facebook
April 17, 2021

When Alexei [Navalny] came to after the coma, and everything began to gradually improve, I thought that I would not soon have to endure minutes worse than I had in the plane from Tomsk as it was landing in Omsk. Things didn’t happen like that. It was a law of life, or something. Such powerful emotional experiences didn’t happen one after another.

But now eight months have passed, and I’m back on that plane, only this time it is landing very slowly.

People usually avoid the word “dying.” Some avoid it out of superstition. I personally avoid it because loud words like that shouldn’t be used lightly.

But Alexei is now dying. In his condition, it’s a matter of days. The lawyers just can’t get into [the prison] to see him at the weekend, yet no one knows what will happen on Monday.

We witnessed tremendous support in Omsk. Alexei himself later said many times in interviews that Putin had let him to be taken abroad for treatment because he realized it would do him no good to have Navalny die “live on the air.”

Now he is dying in exactly the same way, in plain view of everyone, only this time more slowly, and access to Alexei is much more difficult. Apparently, that’s why it seems to everyone that nothing terrible is happening. The hunger strike has lasted for eighteen days, Navalny has been gradually losing the feeling in his arms and legs, and some tests have been done. All this has been blurred in time, and people don’t have the sense that they are again witnessing a murder.

In 2015, we were organizing a big spring protest rally and heavily promoting it. Alexei himself handed out leaflets in the subway, which landed him in jail for fifteen days. But then [Boris] Nemtsov was murdered. In the end, the rally did take place, and it was huge, only the occasion for the rally had changed altogether.

Now, too, a rally is being organized to demand Alexei’s release, and it will be huge as well. But I don’t want it to happen for any other reason.

Putin reacts only to mass street protests. Even the threat of them scares him. The Kremlin has also been looking at the counter of people [who have pledged to attend the protest] on the Free Navalny website and thinking, Aha, the pace has slowed down, there is no reason to be worried, we can keep going. Navalny is dying: let him die. We won’t let a doctor see him. We won’t allow him to be treated. We should push even harder: we’ll declare his supporters extremists to keep them quiet.

This rally is no longer Navalny’s chance for freedom. It is a condition of keeping him alive. And every new day could be the last.

https://free.navalny.com/

Kira Yarmysh is Alexei Navalny’s press secretary. As of today (April 17, 2021), nearly 453,000 Russians had pledged to attend protests demanding Navalny’s release (see the screenshot, below). Photo of Yarmysh courtesy of Wikipedia. Translated by the Russian Reader

Mission of Burma

Dmitry Gudkov
Facebook
April 1, 2021

The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), or in Russian, the Gulag, is designed so that an inmate cannot save his own life other than by directly endangering his own life.

Alexey Navalny’s hunger strike has the simplest, most natural demand: to be seen by a doctor. It’s not about politics, or even about justice, but about seeing a doctor.

When scoundrels from different “media” and “public monitoring commissions” say that a doctor is an unnecessary luxury for an inmate, they dig a hole for themselves. Because Arashukov and Spiegel are the two latest prime examples.

“The witnesses in my case were electrocuted!” former Senator Arashukov shouts.

“I’m a goner,” former Senator Spiegel whispers.

But their words will not change anything, because they were silent when they were free.

And also because we are silent. Navalny’s hunger strike, even with its media presence, is a desperate step. In response, there has been a resounding silence. But Alexander Shestun has been on hunger strike for a week. Have you heard about it?

Did you want to hear about it?

The sadism of the upper classes and the indifference of the lower classes.

Silence on both sides in response to the demand to “free everyone.”

They will, in fact, come for everyone. No one is an exception.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Moscow Has Some Truly Disturbing Reasons for Backing Myanmar Junta, El Murid Says
Window on Eurasia (Paul Goble)
April 2, 2021

The Putin regime’s cooperation with the most vicious and inhumane regimes on earth is usually explained either by its desire to gain allies among those the West because of its principles have made outcasts or by its interest in selling weapons to those who can’t get them easily elsewhere, Anatoly Nesmiyan says.

Those interests can’t be ignored, of course, the Russian commentator who blogs under the screen name El Murid says, but tragically, there are some additional reasons that are even more fateful and disturbing, all of which involve Moscow’s interest in studying the repressive techniques others use for adoption in Russia.

The Putin regime’s proclivity for cooperating with the worst regimes on earth has just been highlighted by its decision to send a deputy defense minister to attend a parade in Myanmar on the occasion of the anniversary of that country’s military, a parade all other countries chose to boycott because of the Myanmar military’s repression.

These other countries acted on principle, Nesmiyan says; but “the Russian regime doesn’t have principles and in support of its interests, it will cooperate with any cannibal.” And despite what many think, these interests are not just military sales or geopolitical competition. They involve learning from others the most effective means of repression.

Having increasingly turned to the use of force against its own people, the Putin regime “with deep interest studies the advanced experience of its partners in such questions.” Putin himself admitted as much about Syria which he describes as “a testing ground;” one that is first and foremost about the destruction of the civilian population.

The army of Myanmar has shown again and again that it is ready, willing and able to kill that country’s population in the name of keeping the generals in power, and that alone makes it particularly interesting for the Russian defense ministry and its bosses in the Kremlin, Nesmiyan says.

In addition, and adding to its attractiveness as an object lesson for Moscow, the commentator continues, the Myanmar military has been involved in the brutal suppression of ethnic and religious minorities, a challenge that the Russian siloviki also faces; and it has had to come up with a way to field a force in an ethnically diverse country, another Russian challenge.

The military in Myanmar “in fact is a military corporation of the ethnic majority,” something that has led ethnic minorities to form their own force structures, a prospect Moscow fears but, in the future, may not be able to prevent. And thus, the way the dominant army manages is of no small interest to Myanmar’s Moscow backers.

Network Case Suspects Go on Hunger Strike

Network Case Suspects Go on Hunger Strike
OVD Info
December 2, 2018

Andrei Chernov in court. Photo courtesy of Mediazona and OVD Info

Dmitry Pchelintsev and Andrei Chernov, residents of Penza and suspects in the so-called Network case, have gone on hunger strike, claiming remand prison officials and FSB officers have intimidated them during their review of their criminal case file, something to which they are entitled by Russian law. Several Penza suspects in the case have claimed they have been put in solitary confinement, handcuffed to radiators, and threatened with violance.

Pchelintsev and Chernov went on hunger strike on November 29, as reported by the Parents Network, a support group established by the mothers and fathers of the young men, who have been accused of involvement in a “terrorist community” that, allegedly, was planning an armed uprising during the March 2018 presidential election and 2018 FIFA World Cup, held in Russia this past summer.

It was on November 29 that wardens put Pchelintsev in solitary, demanding he admit to breaking the rules by talking with other inmates during yard time. He responded by going on hunger strike, and Chernov joined him as a token of support and solidarity. On November 30, wardens again tried to bargain with Pchelintsev and threaten him.

The Parents Network notes that the pressure on their sons has increased now that the suspects are officially reviewing the case file.

Lawyer Anatoly Vakhterov told the group that Network case suspect Ilya Shakursky had been been visited by Penza Remand Prison Warden Oleg Iskhanov, who asked him how quickly he was reviewing the file. On November 20, immediately after the incident, Shakursky was reprimanded for greeting other inmates during yard time. The alleged violation was written up, and the same day Shakursky was issued a special uniform for his upcoming stint in solitary confinement. He managed to avoid going there by filing a complaint with Penza Regional Prosecutor Natalya Kantserova.

Earlier, Maxim Ivankin spent five days in solitary. This was proceeded by a visit from Warden Iskhanov, who likewise asked Ivankin how quickly he was reviewing the case file.

As the defense lawyers explained to the Parents Network, the suspects had been reviewing the case file not only at the remand prison but also at the local FSB office. Under Russian law, suspects may review case files for up to eight hours a day. Allegedly, the Network suspects were handcuffed to radiators and stairway railings the entire time. Vasily Kuksov and Arman Sagynbayev were handcuffed to each other. As the Parents Network has noted, the suspects not only experienced physical discomfort but were also unable to examine the case file freely and take notes.

Shakursky and Pchelintsev refused to go through the procedure in such conditions. In turn, they were threatened with violence. According to them, the man who threatened them was a certain A. Pyatachkov, who had been involved in torturing them when they were initially detained in the autumn of 2017.

Mikhail Kulkov said that after handcuffing him to the staircase, FSB officers videotaped him. As they filmed him, they said, “Look at Network terrorists reviewing the case file.”

The suspects requested their lawyers be present during the review. Consequently, the authorities stopped taking them to the FSB office. Currently, all case file materials are brought directly to the remand prison.

kuksov and pchelintsev Vasily Kuksov and Dmitry Pchelintsev in court. Photo courtesy of Rupression and OVD Info

“Obviously, all these measures are methods of mental and physical violence,” argues Vakterov. “There are signs that the group of FSB investigators, led by Senior Investigator Valery Tokarev, have been putting pressure on the suspects. Why? To speed up the review process and make it impossible to verify the complaints of torture made by the suspects. They want to intimidate the lads, who are fighting back any way they can under the circumstances.”

These events have spurred the Parents Network to issue a communique, which we publish here in an abridged version.

We, the parents of the suspects in the Penza Case, bear witness to the numerous violations suffered by our children during their review of the case file.

To avoid allowing the time necessary to investigate the claims made by our sons that they were tortured by FSB officers, the group of investigators, led by Valery Tokarev, has done everything possible to speed up the process of reviewing the Network case file. To this end, the investigators have engaged in daily acts of emotional and physical violence against the suspects, to wit:

Our sons have been prevented from reviewing the case file with their lawyers present. When they have attempted to refuse lawfully to review the case file, they have been subjected to physical preventive measures: they have been handcuffed to whatever metal structures came to hand and handcuffed to each other. During the review of the case file, at least one hand of each suspect has been handcuffed. These actions have prevented them from concentrating on reading the file and thoughtfully preparing to defend their rights in court. This testifies to the fact that investigators have doubts about the case, and so they would like to hand it over to the court as quickly as possible.
FSB field officers who were involved in torturing our sons have been among the people allowed to be present during the investigative case file review. They have been brought to the review to exert pressure on our children. The FSB officers in question have threatened them with physical violence if they refuse to continue with the case file review. The point of their actions is to speed up the review process, intimidate the suspects, and interfere with a potential investigation of the acts of torture they perpetrated.
Our demands that a lawyer be present during the proceedings and that the act of reviewing the case file not be hindered by handcuffing the hands of the suspects to tables, chairs, radiators, and stairways have led to our children being placed in solitary confinement, where they have once again been visited by FSB officers and investigators, who have tried to speed up the review process by threatening them.

We speak constantly of incidents of torture. They say there is no smoke without fire. We are unfamiliar with the contents of the criminal investigative case file due to the nondisclosure agreement signed by all the defense lawyers. If our children have violated the law, they will answer to society to the full extent of the law. In the present circumstances, however, they are unable to answer to society. They answer to people who believe that physical violence, beatings, and electric shock torture can be legally used to make other people’s lives conform to the canons and stories that will get them new assignments and promotions.

It is impossible to defend the rights of our sons in the current circumstances. We cannot prove they were tortured. We have exhausted all the legal resources we have in Russia. But we, our sons, the Public Monitoring Commissions, reporters, civil rights activists, and politicians must and will go on fighting for the sake of one big goal: making the Russian legal and justice system more humane.

We call on Russian Federal Human Rights Ombusdman Tatyana Moskalkova, Mikhail Fedotov, chair of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, and Yevgeny Myslovsky, a member of the council, to visit the Penza Case suspects. You are our last hope for help in combating torture in Russia. This joint task is our primary responsibility to society.

As we face the inevitability of double-digit sentences for our sons, we hope that all of us will have someone whose example will inspire us. It will be not the people who tortured our sons. Then none of this would make any sense at all.

The lawyers of the Penza suspects in the Network case say their clients have reached out to Tatyana Moskalkova and Mikhail Fedotov, asking them to visit and requesting their help in investigating the incidents of torture. Moskalkova and Fedotov have not yet replied to their appeals, although in November a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights did visit the Petersburg suspects in the Network case.

[…]

Translated by the Russian Reader

***************

What can you do to support the Penza and Petersburg antifascists and anarchists tortured and imprisoned by the FSB?

Donate money to the Anarchist Black Cross via PayPal (abc-msk@riseup.net). Make sure to specify your donation is earmarked for “Rupression.”
Spread the word about the Network Case aka the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case. You can find more information about the case and in-depth articles translated into English on this website (see below), rupression.com, and openDemocracyRussia.
Organize solidarity events where you live to raise money and publicize the plight of the tortured Penza and Petersburg antifascists. Go to the website It’s Going Down to find printable posters and flyers you can download. You can also read more about the case there.
If you have the time and means to design, produce, and sell solidarity merchandise, please write to rupression@protonmail.com.
Write letters and postcards to the prisoners. Letters and postcards must be written in Russian or translated into Russian. You can find the addresses of the prisoners here.
Design a solidarity postcard that can be printed and used by others to send messages of support to the prisoners. Send your ideas to rupression@protonmail.com.
Write letters of support to the prisoners’ loved ones via rupression@protonmail.com.
Translate the articles and information at rupression.com and this website into languages other than Russian and English, and publish your translations on social media and your own websites and blogs.
If you know someone famous, ask them to record a solidarity video, write an op-ed piece for a mainstream newspaper or write letters to the prisoners.
If you know someone who is a print, internet, TV or radio journalist, encourage them to write an article or broadcast a report about the case. Write to rupression@protonmail.com or the email listed on this website, and we will be happy to arrange interviews and provide additional information.
It is extremely important this case break into the mainstream media both in Russia and abroad. Despite their apparent brashness, the FSB and their ilk do not like publicity. The more publicity the case receives, the safer our comrades will be in remand prison from violence at the hands of prison stooges and torture at the hands of the FSB, and the more likely the Russian authorities will be to drop the case altogether or release the defendants for time served if the case ever does go to trial.
Why? Because the case is a complete frame-up, based on testimony obtained under torture and mental duress. When the complaints filed by the accused reach the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and are examined by actual judges, the Russian government will again be forced to pay heavy fines for its cruel mockery of justice.

***************

If you have not been following the Penza-Petersburg “terrorism” case and other recent cases involving frame-ups, torture, and violent intimidation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and other arms of the Russian police state, read and disseminate recent articles the Russian Reader has posted on these subjects.

The Minimum of Solidarity (125 Days)

day 125 Award-winning Ukrainian filmmaker and political prisoner Oleg Sentsov has been on hunger strike for 125 days in the Polar Bear Maximum Security Prison in the far north of Russia. His only demand throughout the strike has been that the Russian authorities release sixty-four other Ukrainian political prisoners, most of them, like Mr. Sentsov, from Crimea, which was illegally occupied by Russia in 2014.

In recent days, I have seen a lot of snide commentary from Russian nationals to the effect that Mr. Sentsov should give up his hunger strike, because it’s obviously not working.

In my opinion, what Mr. Sentsov, who was sentenced to twenty years in prison on trumped-up charges by a kangaroo military tribunal in Rostov-on-Don, does is up to him, don’t you think? I think he should get a free pass when it comes to what he does or doesn’t do after the Putin regime ruined his life while Russian society mostly stood by idly and silently once again.

Oleg Sentsov is a far braver man than most of us can hope to be. If we do not want to help him and refuse to show solidarity with him and his cause, the least we could do would be to refrain from writing and talking about him.

That would be the minimum of solidarity in this case. {TRR}

#SaveOlegSentsov

Oleg Sentsov: 115 Days

115 Days “The 115th day of Sentsov’s hunger strike.” Image courtesy of Askold Kurov

Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov has been on hunger strike for 115 days in the Polar Bear Maximum Security Prison Camp in Labytnangi, Russia, where he has been serving a twenty-year sentence on trumped-up charges of “terrorism.”

Mr. Sentsov’s only crime was that he opposed the occupation of his native Crimea by neo-imperialist Russia.

Mr. Sentsov’s only demand is that Russian authorities release sixty-four other Ukrainian political prisoners they have incarcerated during their illegal war against Ukraine.

#Free64
#SaveSentsov
#FreeOlegSentsov
#OlegSentsov

97 Days

Capture “The ninety-seventh day of Sentsov’s hunger strike”

Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker who was sentenced to twenty years in prison on trumped-up charges of “terrorism” (charges made against him by the wannabe supah powah, Russia, that illegally occupied his homeland of Crimea in spring 2014) has now been on hunger strike for 97 days in a Russian maximum security penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

From day one, Mr. Sentsov’s only demand has been that Russia free the other 64 political prisoners it incarcerated on trumped-up charges after its attempt to destabilize its “vassal state” Ukraine by occupying Crimea and dispatching “separatists” to Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Many of the political prisoners are from Mr. Sentsov’s homeland of Crimea. Many of them are Crimean Tatars, a people who were deported en massed by Stalin during WWII and only recently had resettled in Crimea.

As Mr. Sentsov’s hunger strike has gone on, there have been more and more attempts by people all over the world to persuade Russia to show mercy towards him and his fellow political prisoners. Sadly, there is no evidence that any of these calls has had any effect on decision makers in Russia.

I have decided to stop using euphemisms like “the Kremlin” and “the Putin regime” when what I mean is Russia. Of course there are considerable numbers of Russian nationals who would like to see Mr. Sentsov and his fellow Ukrainian political prisoners released, and yet the vast number of these people have been asleep at the wheel, at best, signally and deliberately absent from the fray, at worst. They want the mythical “international community” and the few brave countrymen and countrywomen who openly and publicly call for Mr. Sentsov’s release (and many other things, usually) to do all the heavy lifting.

Is it because they’re scared of the consequences? Partly. But mostly they think politics is a dirty thing, something only fools would get mixed up in.

They think — mistakenly — that there are more important things in life, like driving a nice car and going on holiday. Or, alternately, just struggling to make ends meet, because the capitalist economy and staggering corruption has ensured that, while Moscow has a record number of millionaires and billionaires, tens of millions of Russians do not share in their own country’s vast natural and manufactured wealth, subsisting below or just above the poverty line. {TRR}

#FreeOlegSentsov
#SaveSentsov

Image courtesy of Askold Kurov

Oleg Sentsov: “Catastrophically Bad”

Dmitry Dinze is Oleg Sentsov’s lawyer. Oleg Sentsov is the Ukrainian filmmaker and political prisoner who has been on hunger strike for eight-six days in the Polar Bear Maximum Security Penal Colony in Labytnangi, Yamalo-Nenetsk Autonomous District, Russian Federation. His only demand has been that the Kremlin release the sixty-four other Ukrainian political prisoners currently held in Russian prisons.

Late last night, Mr. Dinze, one of Russia’s best human rights and criminal defense lawyers, wrote, “I’m no fan of rumors, of course. I find facts more interesting, even better, confirmed facts, but in this case the circumstances are different. According to diplomats who have been in contact with Russian officials on resolving the issue of Oleg Sentsov, they have no intention of releasing Sentsov. They are thinking his death should be a lesson to other inmates. If this is true, I don’t know what to say.”

Natalya Kaplan
Facebook
August 8, 2018

Things are not just bad, they are catastrophically bad. Oleg sent me a letter via his lawyer. He almost cannot stand up anymore. He wrote the end was near, and he was not talking about being released from prison. He asked whether anyone was still interested in his hunger strike: he is not given the letters sent to him, none of them. He said was in a news vacuum and had no idea what was happening.

The European Court of Human Rights insisted he be transferred to a civilian hospital, one close to his place of residence. Oleg refused. He said he would simply not survive the trip, and he had been bullied even more in the civilian hospital in Labytnangi, where he was hospitalized in the intensive care ward, than he had been in the prison hospital.

That’s Russia for you. I have no clue what else we can do and how we can save him. Things are really bad.

Natalya Kaplan is Oleg Sentsov’s cousin. Thanks to Yana Teplitskaya for the heads-up. Translation and photo by the Russian Reader

83 Days

83 days Image courtesy of Askold Kurov

Ukrainian filmmaker and political prisoner Oleg Sentsov has been on hunger strike in a prison in the far north of Russia for eighty-three (83) days. His only demand is that the Kremlin release the other sixty-four (64) Ukrainian political prisoners it has incarcerated on trumped-up charges in the wake of its illegal, unprovoked occupation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine. {TRR}

#SaveSentsov
#FreeOlegSentsov
#Free64

Yevgenia Litvinova: “The Buskers Played Pink Floyd’s The Wall”

Yevgenia Litvinova. Her placard reads, “Crimean Tatars are not terrorists! Free political prisoners! Emir Hussein Kuku, a member of the Crimean Human Rights Group, has been on hunger strike since June 26.” Photo courtesy of Ms. Litvinova’s Facebook page

Yevgenia Litvinova
Facebook
July 19, 2018

July 18, 2018

We arrived at Strategy 18 ahead of time yesterday, but we started our pickets half an hour later.

An unauthorized rally against raising the retirement age was planned to take place on Malaya Sadovaya Street. They might have needed help. Paddy wagons were lined up on the Nevsky. It was understood people would be arrested. That was what happened.

Two hundred people attended the protest rally. Fourteen of them were detained, including Father Grigory Mikhnov-Vaytenko, a member of the St. Petersburg Human Rights Council. The detainees were driven from one police precinct to another for three hours. They were released around midnight.

Why do so few people defend their own interests? Are they afraid? Yes. Was the rally poorly advertised? That, too. But there is also an indifference to everything and everyone, including oneself.

Around a year ago, in September 2017, we organized a Peace March. It was also unauthorized, of course. Approximately three hundred people showed up. It was understandable: people are fed up with the antiwar agenda. They want to isolate themselves from other people’s corpses and the crimes of their own government.

Pensions affectly them directly, however. They are the ones whose money is being stolen, lots of money when you add it up. Yet people are again okay with everything.

“Should I bring the rope [to hang me]?”

At seven-thirty, we went back to our own plan, pulling out placards about the persecution of the Crimean Tatars. Natalia Voznesenskaya and I stood together for reasons of safety. There were tons of hired thugs [titushki] out on the Nevsky yesterday. They all claimed to be Crimeans who had just arrived from Crimea. You would have thought Crimea had sent a landing force to the shores of the Neva.

When they walked by us, they would shout the same thing.

“It’s not true! It doesn’t exist! You’re making it all up!”

What doesn’t exist?

My placard featured a picture of Emir Hussein Kuku, who has gone on hunger strike. What was not true? Did Kuku not exist? Did he not go on hunger strike?

There has been good news from Kuku’s wife. He ended his hunger strike today, July 19. However, his hand was forced by the rapid deterioration of his health.

That was today, though. His hunger strike lasted twenty-four days.

I have a young lady friend who is three years old. “No” and “not” are currently the keywords in her vocabulary.

When the first two lines of Samuil Marshak’s famous children’s poem “What a Scatterbrain”—”A scatterbrained man lived / on Basin Street”—are read to Sonya, she comments, “He did not live. He was not a man. He was not scatterbrained. It was not on Basin Street.”

It was exactly like that at our protest yesterday. A woman holding a child’s hand shouted the memorized text at us. She didn’t hesitate to look that way in front of the child. Or she thought the child didn’t understand what mom was saying.

There was also an attack on one of our picketers. Alexander Khmelyov was standing on Anichkov Bridge. One of the hawkers who encourages people to go on boat trips, a huge man in his thirties who could just as well have been tossing heavy sacks for a living, tore Alexander’s placard from his hands and tossed it into the Fontanka River.

We complained to the police. We pointed the attacker out to them.

Their response?

“Go to the precinct and file a complaint.”

The guardians of order didn’t bother to go up and talk to the attacker.

The buskers were playing Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

Translated by the Russian Reader

Oleg Sentsov

37388658_2052268531474743_764773632051249152_n The room in the prison infirmary where Oleg Sentsov is kept.

Anton Naumlyuk
Facebook
July 19, 2019

Oleg Sentsov

Attorney Dmitry Dinze visited Oleg Sentsov in the Labytnangi penal colony today.

“He looked even worse than last time. He was quite pale. He walked under his own power. Around a week ago, he went through a second health crisis. He got sick. The doctors wanted to hospitalize him and force-feed him as much as possible, to give him IV drips with more nutrients. He refused. He was left in the penal colony on the condition he would ingest the nutrient mix himself under a doctor’s supervision. He takes two spoonfuls a day. He is kept in a room in the prison infirmary. He has no intention of quitting the hunger strike. ‘I’ll hold out as long as I can last,’ he says.”

Sentsov also expressed bewilderment as to why Ukraine and Lyudmila Denisova, human rights ombudsman for the Verkhovna Rada, had ended their vigorious campaign of support for Ukrainian political prisoners.

“Sentsov thinks the Ukrainian side should do more to press for the release of the other political prisoners,” said Dinze.

Sentsov also sent his greetings to Yevgeny Panov (Yevhen Panov), a defendant in the case of the so-called Crimean saboteurs, and to Vladimir Balukh.

Thanks to Askold Kurov and Vladimir Akimenkov for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader