Translated material
General petition
Members of the Russian Pen-Center, writers and scientists turned to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a request to pardon the Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov. The text of the appeal is published by the COLTA publication.
Culture figures supported the request of film director Alexander Sokurov to treat Sentsov with mercy.
"We ask you, Mr. President, to apply the norm of the law to Oleg Sentsov, allowing the head of state to make a decision to pardon convicts without guilty on their part, please use all available resources and mechanisms for the speedy liberation of our colleague Oleg Sentsov," the document says.
The letter emphasizes that Sentsov never refused the citizenship of Ukraine. "The link to the fact that the law on the accession of Crimea implies an automatic transition to Russian citizenship sounds like an echo of serfdom," the appeals say.
Under the document, 60 members of the Russian Pen-Center signed. They were joined by 13 members of the free historical society, writers Sergey Gandlevsky, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Vladimir Voinovich and many others. In total, there is 80 signatures under the appeal.
At the same time, the press service of the Russian Pen-Center said that the organization itself has nothing to do with the letter. “We didn’t write anything to Vladimir Vladimirovich. The Executive Committee and President of the Pen-Center do not participate in this. This is not our initiative. We have a group of“ liberal ”oppositionists who are trying to conflict and lead their own line with us. They are members of the center, but accept their own statements, collect signatures among like-minded people,” the press service explained.
On Friday, at a press conference, Putin, answering the question of political affairs against Ukrainians, said : “What should we do if the film director, and this was proved in court, was preparing for the commission of terrorist acts? Let him go only because he is different from the personnel employee of military intelligence, who planned to do the same? The reconnaissance staff who are preparing for terrorist acts? How do they differ from each other in this case?
On December 2, at a meeting of President Sokurov, he turned to Putin with a "heart request to solve the Sentsov problem" , "forgiving" the Crimean prisoner in Russian, in a Christian. " Putin, however, refused the request.
On August 25, 2015, the collegium of the North Caucasus District Military Court sentenced Sentsov to 20 years in a strict regime, passing with him in the same case of Alexander Kolchenko - by 10 years ( 
On October 21, it became known that the Russian Ministry of Justice refused Ukraine to issue Sentsov and Kolchenko. Officials referred to the fact that both political prisoners after the annexation of Crimea became citizens of Russia, and therefore, according to Russian laws, even if they have citizenships of other states, they are not subject to time to retire to these countries. In fact, however, neither Sentsov nor Kolchenko became citizens of Russia. Both political prisoners have repeatedly emphasized that only Ukrainian citizenship have.
Thus, the legal procedure for transferring the political zones to their homeland was failed. Moreover, it remains the opportunity to use political mechanisms. It was their involvement that allowed another Crimean prisoner to return to their homeland - Gennady Afanasyev, as well as the prisoner of war, Nadezhda Savchenko and the defendant of the “spy” case Yuri Soloshenko.
Sentsov is serving a term of IK-1 strict regime in Yakutsk. The administration of the colony repeatedly placed the political prisoner in a schizo .
On December 15, lawyer Dmitry Dinze, who visited Police in a colony, said that Sentsov was "everything is fine." The director told the lawyer that during the imprisonment he wrote five scripts and one story .