Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 14.05.2019

It turns five years in May as Oleg Sentsov, [Ukrainian] film director, has been kept in a Russian prison – without proven guilt, a fair trial and objective investigation (it is known that no one suffered from Sentsov’s actions), but most likely, a citizen of Ukraine, 42-year-old father of two children, was sentenced in Russia to 20 years of strict regime on Putin’s personal order.

In the spring of 2014, the authorities needed an intimidating demonstrative quasi-judicial process demonstrating]: we would smash anyone and imprison him for years. Over the past five years, hundreds of citizens of Russia and Ukraine have become victims of this policy of intimidation. According to the Memorial [human rights society], there are 262 persons kept in Russian prisons today for political reasons. 76 of them are political prisoners, another 186 are deprived of their freedom in connection with the exercise of their right to freedom of religion. Over the past year, the number of political prisoners in our country increased by 65 per cent. Obviously, anyone can turn out in their place tomorrow.

Our duty is to go on seeking the release of illegally convicted persons: we should remember this, talk and write about it and demand it. It is not enough “not to live in lies” and not to directly participate in the criminal actions of the present government. Each of us is responsible for the country. If yesterday our neighbours got under the steamroller of the system, then tomorrow our turn will come. This is how the mafia state and its repressive mechanism work. Virtually the only chance to survive and defeat the system is organised political resistance, which begins with a mass-scale coalition in the ranks of the opposition party (see “Make Your Voice Louder! Participate in Politics Here and Now”, Novaya Gazeta, February 2019).

The fate of Oleg Sentsov is inextricably linked with the future of Russia, with the future of our children. Normal development of our country, ensuring our national interests and security in the modern world is impossible without changing the policies towards Ukraine, without stopping imposing on Kiev living by the rules of the Kremlin, without abandoning the so-called “doctrine of limited sovereignty”, without settling relationhsips with Ukraine, without ending the war in Donbass (see “The Path to Peace for Donbass”, April 2019), without the initiative to convene an international conference on Crimea. #MakeYourVoiceLouder #FreeSentsov