The Russian Presidential Human Rights Council has requested the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) to take urgent measures to protect the health of Ukrainian citizen Oleksandr Kolchenko, who is serving his sentence in Russia, the council said on its website.
“Today, the council’s chairman, Mikhail Fedotov, requested that the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service take urgent measures to protect the health of Ukrainian citizen Oleksandr Kolchenko, who is serving his sentence in FSIN Penal Colony No. 16 in the Chelyabinsk region,” it said.
The council also requested that Margarita Pavlova, the human rights commissioner for the Chelyabinsk region, visit Kolchenko and monitor the conditions of his incarceration.
Fedotov informed the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada’s Human Rights Commissioner, Liudmyla Denisova, about the measures being taken.
“The Human Rights Council is constantly monitoring the case of Oleksandr Kolchenko and Oleh Sentsov, who were convicted on charges of planning terror attacks,” the council said.
Denisova earlier requested that the Human Rights Council assist in the provision of medical assistance to Kolchenko.
In August 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Ukrainian filmmaker Sentsov, who had been detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a maximum-security penal colony for an attempt to create a terrorist group in Crimea. Kolchenko was given ten years in the same case.
On May 14, 2018, Sentsov went on a hunger strike and demanded the release of all Ukrainian citizens being held in Russia.
On May 31, Kolchenko also went on a hunger strike and demanded Sentsov’s release. On June 7, he ended the hunger strike.
