Translated material
The Kremlin refused Sentsov's mother's request for his pardon
To begin the pardon procedure, director Oleg Sentsov must himself make a corresponding request to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is stated in the response that the director’s mother Lyudmila Sentsova received from the Russian Presidential Administration, the Ukrainian TV channel Hromadske reports.
Sentsov’s sister Natalya Kaplan told Hromadska that the director “definitely” will not write a petition for pardon.
Update . On the morning of August 15, the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov commented to journalists about the letter from Oleg Sentsov’s mother. “I still have nothing to add regarding Sentsov. You know that there is legislation. Using the phrase ‘they refused pardon’ is incorrect from a legal point of view, because there was no request for pardon,” he said.
Let us note that Putin pardoned former prisoner of war and now Verkhovna Rada deputy Nadezhda Savchenko without her personal petition. The relatives of the deceased VGTRK journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, [of whose murder] Savchenko was accused, asked for Savchenko’s release.
- Lyudmila Sentsovaturned to Vladimir Putin with a request to pardon her son in mid-July.
- Oleg Sentsov has been on a hunger strike in prison for 93 days. On August 14, the director was visited by human rights activist Zoya Svetova, who said that he had lost 17 kilograms, but did not intend to stop his hunger strike.