MOSCOW - The defense lawyers for Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov and activist Oleksandr Kolchenko, who were convicted in Russia of plotting terror attacks in Crimea, will be seeking their return to Ukraine.
“There are two options for a swap: a political one, where two states agree on a swap, as was the case with the Estonian spy [Eston] Kohver, and the second one, stipulated in bilateral agreements between Russia and Ukraine, is when persons are sent to the country of their citizenship to serve their sentence,” Kolchenko’s lawyer Svitlana Sydorkina told reporters on Nov. 24.
“We will use both options,” she said.
For his part, Sentsov’s lawyer Dmytro Dinze said the defense team will continue trying to get the verdict overturned.
“Our next step is to write a cassation complaint and then decide on the swap issue,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday the Russian Supreme Court upheld the verdicts against Sentsov and Kolchenko, who were sentenced to 20 and 10 years in a high-security prison, respectively, for plotting terrorist attacks in Crimea.
