Volodymyr Balukh, 47, a pro-Ukrainian Crimean farmer imprisoned by Russia, has been on hunger strike for 100 days to protest his incarceration.
A lesser-known Ukrainian prisoner of Russia than Oleg Sentsov, who is also on hunger strike, Balukh was jailed allegedly because he refused to conceal his pro-Ukrainian beliefs after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.
Balukh’s ordeal began when he was arrested by the Russian FSB security service in December 2016 for having 90 rounds of ammunition and several explosives at his home.
In 2017, a court in Crimea sentenced him to three years and seven months in jail and fined 10,000 rubles. But Balukh pleaded not guilty and said that the Russian authorities of the peninsula were punishing him for an open demonstration of his pro-Ukrainian views.
After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, Balukh continued to fly a Ukrainian flag on a mast in his garden. On the wall of his house, he hung the sign “Heavenly Hundred Street,” in reference to the protesters who were killed during the EuroMaidan Revolution in January-February 2014. Twice in 2016 he was criminally charged for “insulting an official” – because he called Russian police officers occupiers.
Balukh’s went on hunger strike on March 19, after the court agreed to reduce his sentence by just two months. At the same time, another case was opened against him, which accused him of attacking the head of the local temporary detention facility, Valery Tkachenko. Balukh maintains that Tkachenko assaulted, humiliated, and offended him to provoke a response.
Since March, Balukh has refused food, drinking only water. He lost 30 kilograms, his lawyers said. Balukh’s condition has deteriorated to such an extent that he could not attend the latest court hearing for his application of parole on June 25. It was rescheduled to July 5.
A Facebook post by journalist Andrii Klymenko compares activist Volodymyr Balukh’s appearance before and after conviction and hunger strike. (Facebook)
In May, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin discussed the case of Balukh with the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Dunja Mijatović. He said that the imprisonment of Balukh and other Ukrainians like him in Crimea are “not isolated cases of human rights violations, but a consistent and clearly coordinated policy of Moscow.”
On June 22, Balukh wrote a letter to President Poroshenko, describing how on Russia Day, celebrated on June 12, many prisoners in his prison sung the Ukrainian national anthem and shouted “Glory to Ukraine.” He also advised that Ukraine should not “sink to Russia’s level” in response to its actions as “evil for the sake of goodness cannot be.”
Writing on Facebook in response to the letter, Poroshenko praised Balukh’s great courage.
“I will do everything to bring closer the moment when I can shake your hand on free Ukrainian land,” Poroshenko said.
