Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who was illegally imprisoned in Russia and declared a hunger strike on May 14, has agreed to meet with Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea Klyment, who came to visit him in a high-security penal colony (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Russia), his sister Natalia Kaplan has said.
“Oleh has finally agreed to a meeting with Klyment,” Kaplan wrote on her Facebook page on Monday.
Earlier, she said that her brother had refused from the meeting due to atheist convictions.
“Archbishop Klyment came to Labytnangi to visit Oleh. Yes, he does a lot, including for political prisoners (…) But we agreed that before the visit I will ask Oleh whether he wants this meeting. Oleh is still not a supporter of any religion. So why did they need these agreements? Oleh categorically refused to meet,” Kaplan wrote on her Facebook page on Monday.
As reported, on June 1, Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP), Patriarch of Kyiv and all Rus-Ukraine Filaret signed a letter to the head of the Polar Bear colony in Labytnangi in Russia, where Sentsov is being held, on granting Archbishop Klyment (Kusch) the possibility to visit the prisoner for the fulfillment of pastoral duties. Later, the UOC-KP said that Archbishop Klyment had left for Labytnangi, having received the respective blessing of Patriarch Filaret.
