After 167 days on hunger strike, Crimean political prisoner Volodymyr Balukh is reportedly feeling seriously unwell, according to a local activists.
Since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Balukh has faced repeated police harassment and imprisonment for his pro-Ukrainian position. On March 19, he declared a hunger strike in prison.
“I was told that Volodymyr Balukh feels very bad,” Akhtem Chiygoz, deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis representative body, wrote on Facebook on Sept. 1.
“Also they want to send him to the ‘pit,’” he added, referring to a punitive solitary confinement cell. The transfer to solitary is reportedly a punishment for hunger striking and, thus, failing to follow the prison rules.
The Russian security service in occupied Crimea arrested Balukh, 47, in December 2016 for allegedly having 90 rounds of ammunition and several explosives at his home. He was eventually sentenced to prison on this charge, but the verdict was later overturned.
Then, in spring 2018, the Kremlin-appointed authorities in Crimea opened another case against Balukh for allegedly attacking the head of the temporary detention facility where he was being held. Balukh insisted that the man assaulted, humiliated, and insulted him to provoke a response.
In July, a Crimean court found Balukh guilty of both crimes and sentenced him to five years in prison and a fine of 10,000 rubles ($150) cumulatively.
Balukh and his defense maintain that his prosecution was politically motivated.
“I’m a Ukrainian and that’s why I’m behind bars,” he said back in October 2017.
After Russia annexed Crimea, Balukh continued to fly a Ukrainian flag on a mast in his garden and called Russian police officers occupiers.
After the 2018 court ruling, Balukh launched his hunger strike in protest of his conviction. He does not consume any food, and only drinks water, tea, honey, and liquid produced by boiling down oatmeal porridge.
