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December 14, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
EU tries to pressurise Putin into prisoner swap for Sentsov
Presenting the award, the parliament's president Antonio Tajani called for the immediate and un- conditional release of Sentsov and all other ille- gally detained Ukrainian citizens in Russia and the Crimean Peninsula.
“Oleg Sentsov was nominated for his peaceful protest against the illegal occupation of his na- tive Crimea; also for his courage, determination and his convictions in support of human dignity, democracy, the rule of law and human rights,” he said. “These are the values on which our Euro- pean Union is built, even more so after the ter- rible attack yesterday; values that this parliament cherishes, upholds and promotes.”
In comments to bne IntelliNews, Sentsov's cousin Natalya Kaplan insisted that her cousin’s potential release had not been complicated by the case of Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian helicopter pilot who was part of a prisoner swap in 2016 and has since been accused of plotting a coup against the Kyiv government.
“Nadezhda [Nadiya] Savchenko was illegally im- prisoned by the Russian administration and she needed to be released,” said Kaplan. “Regardless of her political opinions, she had to be freed. I am focusing on Oleg’s case so I am not closely follow- ing the accusations against Savchenko.”
However, Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, ad- mitted the controversial Savcheno case may have complicated future prisoner swaps.
“It’s tragic the impact that Russian prisons has had on her mindset,” Deloire told bne IntelliNews. “But her imprisonment wouldn’t have happened without Russian aggression in the first place.”
MEP Michael Gahler, the parliament’s rapporteur on Ukraine, said another problem with any possi- ble prisoner exchanges is the fact that the Krem- lin doesn’t recognise its own soldiers who have been captured in the Donbas region.
“The Ukrainians have captured 20 Russian sol- diers but the perfidious habit of the Kremlin is not to consider them as their own soldiers,” he said. The awarding of the Sakharov prize to Sentsov has gone down like a lead balloon in Russia with even the opposition journalist Oleg Kashin criticising the director in an interview on state-controlled Perviy Kanal.
Sentsov's work on his film Rhino, about children of the 1990s, was interrupted in 2013, when he joined the Euromaidan revolution that erupted in Ukraine after pro-Russia then president Viktor Yanukovich decided to suspend talks on an EU- Ukraine Association Agreement.
In February 2014, the protests paved the way for a new pro-European government and the oust- ing of Yanukovich. When Moscow responded by illegally annexing Crimea and launching a hybrid war against Ukraine, Sentsov helped bring food to Ukrainian soldiers and organised rallies for a united Ukraine in Simferopol.
Sentsov was arrested by the Russian Federal Se- curity Service in Crimea in May 2014, and deport- ed to Russia. In what Amnesty International called a "cynical show trial", a Russian military court in August 2015 convicted Sentsov to 20 years impris- onment for plotting terrorist acts. Sentsov denies