Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Commissioner Liudmyla Denisova hopes to meet with Roman Sushchenko, a Ukrainian journalist convicted in Russia, by the end of June 18, and now she is waiting for permission from the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service.
“Together with the Ukrainian Embassy in Russia, we have done everything possible so that Moscow City Court judge Muzychenko gave us an opportunity to meet with Roman Sushchenko, and we received such permission. We submitted the documents and permission to the Lefortovo administration. A Lefortovo representative told us that all our documents had been sent to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service to make a decision […] We will now wait here. The opportunity for us to get to Roman Sushchenko expires at 5:30 p.m. The permission is written out for June 18, so we will wait for us to be let in,” she said in a video message on her page on Facebook on June 18.
Denisova also noted that the meeting with her Russian counterpart Tatyana Moskalkova scheduled for June 18 was not canceled.
“My meeting with Moskalkova, scheduled for 2:00 p.m., is not canceled. Her office was notified, and she will wait for us,” the Ukrainian ombudsperson said.
A few minutes later, Denisova reported on Facebook that a deputy head of the institution had come out to her and said that documents on the meeting with Sushchenko had been returned to the Moscow City Court.
“When asked whether it was refusal, the answer was made – go to court, everyone knows there,” she wrote.
