A Ukrainian filmmaker who spent five years in a Russian prison received a warm welcome in Canada on Feb. 4 when he met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and parliamentarians.
Oleg Sentsov, a 43-year-old writer, activist and filmmaker, shared a few ideas on how Canada can help Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
Ottawa should preserve and increase sanctions on Russia, keep Russia out of the G7, and keep bringing economic and political pressure to bear on the country so that one day disgruntled, well-intentioned Russians may eventually drive Russian President Vladimir Putin from power, Sentsov says. Only then will Ukraine get back the territory Russia took from it in 2014 when it annexed his native Crimean peninsula and sent separatist fighters into Donbas.
Sentsov was jailed in what is widely viewed as a vendetta by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The filmmaker was released in September as part of a larger prisoner-swap between Ukraine and Russia after serving part of his 20-year sentence in a prison colony in Russia’s Arctic, for conspiring to commit acts of terrorism — charges he denies.
Two months after his release, Sentsov was awarded Europe’s highest human-rights honor, the Sakharov Prize. Initially, Sentsov was awarded the prize in December 2018 when he was still being held prisoner by Russia in a penal colony, so his cousin, Natalya Kaplan, claimed it for him. When he was given an official reception in November in Strasbourg, Sentsov said he perceives the award as a prize for all Ukrainian captives still held in jails in Russia and Russian-occupied Donbas and Crimea, as well as for all military servicepeople defending Ukraine’s independence.
While talking to the filmmaker in his Parliament Hill office, Trudeau thanked Sentsov for his “strong voice and for your commitment to sharing your story in a way that advances the cause of a strong Ukraine.”
The filmmaker warned Canada’s parliamentarians about the Russian threat. “Putin doesn’t understand talk of peace. He only understands the language of force,” Sentsov was quoted as saying in an interview through a Russian-language translator between meetings with Trudeau and a special session with members of parliament and senators.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and @DeputyPM_Canada Chrystia Freeland meet with Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov today on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. pic.twitter.com/xIM2KqU3mT
— CanadianPM (@CanadianPM) February 5, 2020
Amnesty International earlier said Sentsov was subjected to an “extremely cynical show trial” and should never have spent a moment in prison. Sentsov staged a 144-day hunger strike to protest the jailing of dozens of Ukrainians in Russia.
During his recent overseas trip to the U.S., the filmmaker recalled the tortures he had faced. “One of the kinds of torture in Russian prisons is strangulation with a plastic bag. I had seen this in American movies, and I couldn’t understand why people break down. But your primal instinct kicks in when you’re deprived of the ability to breathe. And then you are overwhelmed with this extraordinary animal fear, which is hard to fight,” Sentsov said.
The filmmaker also admitted that Europe, in his opinion, isn’t doing much to stop Putin.
“They look at him through the prism of their culture and their values of the world.” Too many European countries are too dependent on Russian oil and gas to take a stand against Putin. Europeans are behaving like good, well-behaved children at a birthday party, he said on Feb. 4 in Ottawa.
“Then one hooligan comes to that party, sits on the table and starts eating the cake. And they are trying to persuade him, ‘Do not eat the cake,'” he said. “And those kids are saying, ‘Maybe we can convince him to not eat the cake.’ And then the hooligan says, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure’ and continues doing that.”
Sentsov said he doesn’t believe what Putin says and encourages Canadians not to trust him either.
