Oleksandr Kolchenko, a native of Crimea who is now in a penal colony in Russia, ended his hunger strike on June 7, according to his lawyer Andrei Lepekhin.
“Oleksandr Kolchenko ended his hunger strike today,” Lepekhin wrote on Facebook on June 7.
The lawyer said Kolchenko had told him he was very weak and had begun fainting. “His blood sugar is low and he has already received glucose. His weight dropped to 54 kilos in the course of his hunger strike. They were going to transfer him from the sanitary unit of the penal colony, where he was during his hunger strike, to the prison hospital for medical reasons,” the lawyer wrote.
Kolchenko decided to begin a hunger strike independently after learning about the statement made by Oleh Sentsov, and also made the decision to end the hunger strike independently, Lepekhin wrote. The prisoner announced these decisions in the presence of his lawyer, he wrote.
Kolchenko lost ten kilos during his hunger strike and the preparations for it, Lepekhin wrote.
The Northern Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Sentsov, who was detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penitentiary in August 2015 for an attempt to set up a terrorist group in Crimea. Kolchenko was sentenced to ten years in prison in the same case.
On May 14, 2018, Sentsov went on hunger strike and demanded the release of all Ukrainian citizens held in Russia.
Kolchenko went on hunger strike and demanded the release of Sentsov on May 31.
