In a month, Ukrainian filmmaker and activist Oleg Sentsov will turn 43. For the sixth time, he will celebrate his birthday behind the bars, this time in Siberia. He was detained in May 2014 in Crimea, was arrested on bogus charges of terrorism against the Russian occupation regime. The charges were based on confessions obtained under torture. Sentsov was convicted to 20 years in jail.
The West has heard Sentsov’s name but few know about the fate of around 250 other Ukrainians who are hostages captured by the Kremlin. They are kept in prisons in Russia, in occupied Crimea, in basements of armed conflict area Donbas. Often tortured, they don’t get proper medical treatment, legal advice and are banned from contacting their relatives.
Responding to Russian aggression in Ukraine, the European countries used different mechanisms to stop Russia from breaking the European peace order. The Council of Europe – the international organization which unites almost all European countries that respect human rights, are adherent to democracy and the rule of law – demanded Russia cease the occupation and stop its hybrid war in Ukraine. It’s Parliamentary Assembly adopted a series of resolutions, none of which was ever implemented by Russia, and imposed against it political sanctions, which included the suspension of voting rights at the Assembly.
One of the key demands of the Assembly was to release Kremlin’s prisoners. Russia not only ignored them all but kept deteriorating the situation. The number of hostages has been rising, and here are just a few examples. In November 2018 the Russian Federation captured 23 Ukrainian military servicemen and three vessels. Although the International Tribunal in Hamburg ruled that the aggressor has to liberate the servicemen immediately, Russia ignores it.
In Crimea, people are persecuted for being of Tatar nationality. In March 2019, 24 Crimean Tatar activists and journalists of the Crimean Solidarity initiative, who helped families of political prisoners and reported human rights violations, were also accused of the similar ‘Sentsov-style terrorism plot’, facing now from 10 years to life imprisonment.
As a demarche against sanctions, Russia left the Parliamentary Assembly in 2016, but felt the lack of a platform for spreading their propaganda and self-whitewashing. So it looked for and found a golden key to how to get restored in the Assembly: in 2017, they stopped paying their annual fees of 33 million EUR to the Council’s budget, thus applying financial blackmail.
As a result, the European countries are now closer than ever to ensuring with their own hands the unconditional return of Russia to the Assembly. It is embarrassing that while the Council of Europe is making dramatic steps towards Russia, Moscow does nothing to meet the demands of the Council of Europe.
What signal would this precedent send to other aggressive autocratic regimes?
Ukrainian human rights defenders and the civil society are convinced – the decision on the possible return of Russia to the Assembly in complete neglect by Russia of the requirements of this organization is a blow to its values and moral principles, multiplication of unpunished evil. Any discussion on this matter should begin by Western countries only with the demand to release all illegally detained Ukrainian citizens in Russia and in the occupied Ukrainian territories of Crimea and Donbas.
All that needs to be done practically is for parliamentarians – members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe during the next plenary session of the Assembly on June 24-28 not to abolish the current sanctions mechanism and to keep sanctions against Russia.
Germany, France and all other Council of Europe states can still help to bring Oleg Sentsov and other 250 hostages back home – to the relatives who haven’t seen them for years. Please, call your government to keep pressure against Russia. Ask your national delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: “Do we want to take co-responsibility for Kremlin’s crimes?”
The lives and health of Kremlin’s hostages are worth demanding the Council of Europe to stick to their values. Worth resisting moral surrender to Russia.
Olena Halushka is a member of the board of directors of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kyiv and Oleksandra Matviychuk is head of the Center for Civil Liberties.
