Several hundred people have gathered on Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square in Kyiv to mark the 42nd birthday of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov and to demand his release from a Russian prison. Rallying on July 13, people also requested to free other Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia.
A supporter of Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution, Sentsov was arrested in Crimea in May 2014 and later imprisoned on terrorism charges. He is serving a 20-year sentence in a penal colony in Labytnangi, a town in Russia’s far north, over 4,000 kilometers from Kyiv. Sentsov has been on a hunger strike for two months.
During the rally, Sentsov’s supporters read a letter by filmmaker’s mother Liudmyla Sentsova, who has recently asked President Vladimir Putin to pardon her son.
