Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was sentenced to 20 years “for terrorism”, not his work or his opposition to Russia’s annexation of Sentsov’s native Crimea. His assertion that Russia is a law-based country comes just two weeks after the International Criminal Court accepted jurisdiction over Russia’s ongoing occupation of Crimea and spoke of Russia’s “non-respect of a number of due process and fair trial rights”.
Neither Putin’s assertions about Sentsov, nor his claim that it is the court in Russia which decides have any credibility, and the demands for Sentsov’s release have come not only from world-renowned film directors, but from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the EU, OSCE and all democratic countries.
