"Very surrendered and aged"

According to lawyer Dmitry Dinze, Oleg Sentsov survived the heart crisis, but is not going to stop the hunger strike

Director Oleg Sentsov, who has been holding an indefinite hunger strike for 67 days, began to take small portions of nutrients necessary to maintain life.

On Thursday, lawyer Dmitry Dinze visited the director in the White Bear colony in Labytnangi and found out that in early July, Sentsov began to refuse the heart muscle. The colony doctors suggested sending him to the hospital for forced feeding. “Oleg was able to agree to be left in the colony,” said Dmitry Dinze “New”. “But he agreed to take a nutrient mixture-two or three spoons per day, minimally, only so that his heart would not be faded.”

“He looks bad. I came to him in early June, since then he has been very surrendered and aged. It only holds on the power of will. But the depressed does not seem. He said that he would not leave the hunger strike. ”

According to the lawyer, recently Sentsov has been in information isolation: he no longer receives a new newspaper, he will learn all the news only from letters, but few come from them.

Sentsov handed the lawyer letters for his mother and cousin, as well as the editing of his play “Number”, whose premiere should take place in Ukraine in the fall. “He does not leave his work for a minute,” says Dinze.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the film critic and friend of Oleg Sentsov, Alexei Medvedev, handed over to the administration of the President of the Russian Federation a petition for the pardon of the director, written by his mother. On Monday, he transferred the same petition to the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation. According to the "new" member of the HRC Sergey Krivenko, the appeal was also sent to the presidential administration from the council. Earlier, Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that it would be required.

According to the cousin of the director of Natalia Kaplan, the Sentsov family has discussed the opportunity to submit a petition for the past two years, even knowing that Oleg himself was against asking for his liberation. In June, Alexei Medvedev contacted Sentsov's family, went to Crimea to his mother Lyudmila Georgievna and compiled a text petition with her.

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“We all had the feeling that something needs to be done,” says Alexey Medvedev. - But all the open letters of filmmakers and appeals to the president were followed by the unsubscribes that the appeals would be taken into account, but the convict must initiate a petition for pardon. From the point of view of the law, this is not so: pardon is the sovereign right of the president. He can release whom he wants and when he wants, regardless of the severity of the crime or repentance. Law enforcement shows that the petition is not always mandatory: in the case of Nadezhda Savchenko, he was not there. And there are legal traditions, for example, maternal pardon. The mother’s appeal can be considered without the request of the convict. It seemed to me that this could be the most convincing stroke.

Neither family nor friends agreed with Sentsov himself, realizing that he would be against it. However, according to Alexei Medvedev, if Sentsov is merged, this will be the first precedent of what he himself is fighting: the liberation of people who became hostages of the political situation.

“There are people who say: there is no need to ask for pardon, Oleg wants to accomplish a feat, do not interfere with him. Neither his family nor I think so, ”says Medvedev. - In addition, if the process of exchanging prisoners begins with Oleg, it will be an incredible step forward. "

"There are exceptional cases when the president can take advantage of his right to save human life"

Sentsov himself learned about the petition only on Thursday from his lawyer. According to Dmitry Dinze, he did not respond to the news in any way, but he was very disappointed that the Ukrainian authorities stopped pressure on Russia. “He believes that the Commissioner for Human Rights in Ukraine was supposed to break through to other Ukrainian prisoners in Russia,” says Dinze. “She tried only to get to him.”