While it is Russia’s imprisonment of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz and others that gets reported, there are several times more victims, and many of them very small. If it is hard for adults to understand how Russia can invade another country’s territory and arrest people on manifestly trumped-up charges, how much harder for a child to comprehend why his father has been taken away in handcuffs.
Ilnara Asanova brings her four small children with her to court in the hope that they will be able to see their father. Ali Asanov was arrested in April 2015 on absurd charges linked with a pre-annexation demonstration over which Russia has no jurisdiction. It is likely that he and Mustafa Degermendzhy are in prison as revenge for refusing to give false testimony against Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz. Mustafa, the Asanovs’ youngest child, was born two months after Ali was arrested.
