How much is Sentsov worth?

Russians and Ukrainians will wait until the Kremlin hears the desired price

On July 3, 2018, Ukraine offered Russia a prisoner exchange deal. Kyiv stated that it was ready to hand over 23 Russians - that is, in fact, all those convicted for participation in the war in Donbass. And in exchange he asks for the same number of his citizens held in the Russian Federation.

The most famous names from the list of Russian captives are Viktor Ageev, Igor Kimakovsky, Denis Sidorov, Ruslan Gadzhiev, Larisa Chubarova. The most famous Ukrainian captives: Oleg Sentsov, Stas Klykh, Pavel Grib, Yevgeny Panov, Volodymyr Balukh, etc.

Moscow has not yet given an official response to the proposal. Although the attitude to such initiatives here has long been known. Participants in the armed events in the Donbass, caught by the Ukrainian security forces, the Kremlin refuses to consider on an equal footing with "persons convicted on charges of terrorism." Speaking to Novaya Gazeta, a senior Kremlin official even referred to President Putin's longstanding position that terrorism and humanism are incompatible.

The “unequal exchange” is also legally substantiated by Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who is close to the President of Russia, stating that the exchange of 23 Russian citizens can only be carried out within the framework of the Minsk agreements (that is, only participants in the “armed events in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” from both sides can be exchanged ). This means that for its 23 citizens, Moscow is ready to give up only those Ukrainians who were captured in the Donbass. And Moscow is not going to give away other Ukrainians, no matter how many of its own citizens are offered to it for them. Let everyone sit.

From a formal point of view, everything is fine. If according to "Minsk", then "vacationers" and "militias" should be changed exclusively for Atoshniks.

And participation in the “events in the Crimea” (Sentsov, Kolchenko, Panov), private romantic and business trips to Russia (Karpyuk, Klykh) and even Belarus (Mushroom) really have nothing to do with the Minsk process.

The legibility and feigned pickiness of Moscow as to who will be the “equivalent equivalent” for its captive citizens evokes a sad irony. The Kremlin's silence in response to the deal proposed by Ukraine shows again that for him there is not much difference between "terrorists" and "defenders of the Russian world." It is obvious that both are goods, small change. 46 people, along with their relatives, will endure and wait until the Kremlin hears the desired price.

As for the price, you can fantasize as much as you like. Someone believes that this is the lifting of the sanction or, from the latter, support for the idea of ​​holding a new referendum in the Donbass, allegedly expressed by Putin at a meeting with Trump in Helsinki.

Meanwhile, Novaya Gazeta tracked down friends and relatives of several prisoners from the "list of 23". Relatives of the "militias" Kusakin, Shatalov, Vysotsky did not answer the newspaper's questions. The wife of Denis Sidorov, a Russian citizen sentenced to 11 years, Kristina, replied that “now there is no way to talk” about her husband. Natalya Molchanova, a Ukrainian lawyer for Igor Kimakovsky from St. Petersburg, complained that her client “is all alone”: “It seems that family and friends are simply not interested in him or how he lives [in captivity]. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person he has left at all."

The mother of Russian Viktor Ageev, Svetlana, said that the sentence to her son came into force and that he was transferred to serve a 10-year sentence in a colony in Sumy: “But I continue to believe that our leaders will agree, and we will make an exchange with Ukraine. I hope they don’t abandon us, there are no more hopes.”