The US condemned the unjust sentence of Sentsov and Kolchenko

The United States strongly condemns yesterday’s verdict by the Russian military court to well-known Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov and activist Alexander Kolchenko on the baseless charges of terrorist attacks and other subversive activities in the occupied Crimea. This is stated in a statement by the US State Department.

The statement notes that the decision is a judicial error. Both Ukrainians were taken hostage on the territory of Ukraine, transferred and imprisoned in Russia. They were imposed Russian citizenship against their will, the State Department said.

They were abused by the Russian authorities, who also restricted their access to lawyers and their families, while they spent more than a year in prison. Sentsov and Kolchenko were victims of the actions of the authorities because of their opposition to the Russian annexation of the Crimea, the statement says.

The United States stands with those who are persecuted for exercising their rights to speak freely and peacefully protest. “We once again call on the Russian Federation to fulfill the commitments made when signing the Minsk agreements and to immediately release Oleg Sentsov, Alexander Kolchenko, Nadezhda Savchenko and all other remaining hostages,” the statement said.

On August 25, the Russian District Military Court found Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov guilty of preparing terrorist attacks in the Crimea and sentenced him to 20 years in a high-security penal colony. The second defendant in this case, Alexander Kolchenko, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.