How is he dear to us

The progressive public enthusiastically discusses the question of whether Oleg Sentsov is really ready to go to death. Most discussing poorly imagine what they are discussing. They are poorly represented by what Oleg Sentsov is ready to go with a high degree of probability.

Here you are not an English prison where a starving can be subjected to artificial feeding, only when he already fell into a coma, and even then with the consent of his closest relatives. Remember the hunger strike of Robert Sands and his comrades? Of course, from some point Sentsov will begin to violently feed through the probe. Homo Putinus immediately shakes his head: "Here! So, in fact, Sentsov does not risk anything! No one will let him die."

I will not even explain that daily violent feeding through the probe in itself is a painful torture. Which domestic jailers are trying to make with the help of simple techniques even more painful in order to break the will of the starving. But after several months of violent feeding through the probe, a person still with a high probability dies. Even if it stops a hunger strike. Dies in a week or a month. Or after a couple of months. Because many months of violent feeding through the probe in itself causes irreparable harm to the body. So it was with Anatoly Marchenko. Similar cases with political stories were in Cuba and in continental China.

I want it to be prompted extremely clearly. Oleg Sentsov declares his readiness not just to die. He declares his readiness to die after many months of daily torture. Units are capable of this. But there are capable of it. And we are obliged to proceed from the possibility that Oleg Sentsov is one of them.

And now the question is: for what?

The citizens of Ukraine from the Sentsov List in Russian prisons are actually prisoners of war. Regardless of how each specific case against them was fabricated, they are directly charged with the fact that they in one form or another defended their country from the enemy’s attack. Once again: the authorities of the Russian Federation consider the resistance of Ukrainians of armed aggression against their country as a crime. They were thrown to jail, because the Russian Federation leads a vile, criminal, undeclared "hybrid" war against Ukraine.

Oleg Sentsov declared his deadly hunger strike in order to inflict maximum damage to the enemy in this war. Moral and political damage. So that the whole world has sounded again: Putin is a killer. Putin is an aggressor. Putin is a bandit and a terrorist. So that this sounds so loud that even the conformist European establishment will not be able to evade new sanctions, from new measures to isolate the Putin's Russian Federation. Sentsov is ready to go to a painful death in order for external pressure on the Kremlin to grow to the level necessary to free the remaining hostages. To release prisoners of war.

Putin is unlikely to follow the good advice of his best friend Navalny to replay Sentsov and offer Ukraine an immediate exchange of "all for all." Not the same level of pressure. Putin makes concessions only under pressure from superior strength. Sentsov will not help the culouire chores of court human rights defenders. Sentsov can only be saved by the Kremlin that unacceptable for him moral and political damage today. While Sentsov is alive.

Only the campaign of solidarity with Sentsov can free Sentsov and other Ukrainian prisoners Putin. Loud and scandalous. No, I'm not talking about single pickets, although a low bow to those who spend them. In order for the manifestations of solidarity to sound loudly, they should be expensive. They should be associated with a serious risk for those who show this solidarity. The rates should be high.

No one can demand to go to what Oleg Sentsov is going on. I'm not talking about that. I am about the fact that the country has many wide fame and fairly high social status of people who consider Oleg Sentsov’s struggle against the treacherous seizure of part of his country fair. Which consider the annexation of Crimea a lawless, robber act. Who believe that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine. If only because otherwise the international situation will not be normalized.

Only they prefer not to talk about this publicly. Because now for this a criminal article in the Russian Federation. To argue about how much the requirement to return to the observance of international law and the contractual obligations undertaken falls under an article on attempt on the territorial integrity of the state is exciting in itself. But we know that if they want to fall in the Kremlin, it will fall.

This article is used, however, very selectively. Basically - only in the Crimea. And in Russia, little -known bloggers and "marginal publicists" are preferred not to notice. If some kind of media figure like Ksenia Sobchak suddenly declares the illegality of the annexation of Crimea, the case is still limited to a screech in the "Meeting to approve sexual harassment" in Okhotny. They loudly require "exciting" and "attract", but so far no one has been imprisoned.

This does not mean that it will continue to be so. I do not promise to none of those who will demand the return of Crimea to Ukraine. That is why it should be done. The requirement of the liberation of Oleg Sentsov and those whom he demands to be released, connected with the demand to return the Crimea to Ukraine, will cost more, weigh more and sound louder. Because it is really dangerous.

And then let the "deputies" rage. " Let the investigating authorities “excite” and “attract”. Each public demand to return Crimea to Ukraine will increase the price of refusal for the Kremlin to free Sentsov and other captured citizens of Ukraine. Each criminal case for such a requirement will increase this price even more.

Most of all, the Kremlin clique is afraid that they will cease to be afraid. That her written and unwritten prohibitions will cease to obey. The struggle of Oleg Sentsov is not only the protection of his country from aggression. Sentsov confronts the Russian machine of judicial arbitrariness, from which the citizens of Russia suffer primarily. From opposition activists to no one unknown "households", with which cops throw "nonsense" purely for the sake of checkmarks and sticks. Sentsov’s struggle is the struggle for our freedom too.

At least that's why those who support Sentsov’s struggle for the return of Crimea to Ukraine should at least declare this support publicly. Having put their fame, its status on the scales, possibly - risking judicial persecution. You can help Oleg Sentsov now, just standing next to him and causing fire to himself.