Ukrainian filmmaker and writer Oleg Sentsov, who is now serving a 20-year term in Russia, wrote in a letter to a human rights activist that he would be transferred to a strict penal colony in Russia’s northernmost prison.
Located in Kharp village in Yamalo-Nemets Autonomous District, the facility is situated 4,300 kilometers from Moscow and is notorious for its harsh conditions.
“I don’t expect anything good to come of this trip,” Sentsov wrote in the letter, published on Sept. 30.
The letter was addressed to Zoya Svetova, a human rights defender and a journalist from Open Russia, an initiative that advocates for democracy and human rights in Russia.
“I received a letter from Sentsov by mail on Sept. 29. The date on the last page was Sept. 17, Tyumen city. The stamp on the envelope read – Tyumen Oblast, detention center-1, Tyumen city. Stamped by the censor for correspondence control. Sent on Sept. 21,” Svetova wrote.
Oleg Sentsov, a prominent Ukrainian filmmaker and writer, was arrested in May 2014 in Crimea after the Russian government illegally occupied and annexed the peninsula.
He was charged under Russian anti-terrorism legislation and accused of plotting terrorist attacks in Crimea.
In August 2015, 15 months after his detention, a Russian Military Court in Northern Caucasus sentenced Sentsov to 20 years in prison in a sham trial that allegedly featured falsified evidence, torture, and violations of international law.
Sentsov was transferred from a prison in Yakutsk to another Siberian city, Irkutsk, in September. At that point, his family and lawyers lost track of his location.
According to the letter, he was also sent through prisons in Omsk and Tyumen on the way to Kharp village in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.
He assumed that the decision of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia to move him to more severe conditions just before winter came as a reaction to a birthday call from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. The filmmaker turned 41 in July.
Read more: Campaign to release Oleg Sentsov crosses Atlantic
“You, free people, can do whatever you think you need to do in support of me and other political prisoners,” he wrote. “Just know that local decision-makers have their own logic and they often react that way.”
Sentsov’s rare letters also offer a glimpse into the life of a political prisoner in Russia. He asked not to send him books or any packages without a request from him. He also reported that the prison authorities in Yakutsk had not given him his letters for two years.
Here is a full Kyiv Post translation of Oleg Sentsov’s latest letter:
“Everything is fine with me. I’m moving. They suddenly took me out of Yakutia and are transferring me to the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district. There, there’s only one penal colony – the legendary Kharp. How things are over there, you know better than me, I reckon. I don’t expect anything good to come of this little outing. Especially, having passed through the Irkutsk and Omsk prisons, I have a sense of how bad things can be, and not only from stories.
Nobody touches me physically, of course. But you know very well that this system can horribly punish and torment without using brute force.
Anyway, everything will be fine!
I haven’t written in a while because I was absolutely not in the mood for it. Not because I’m depressed or have lost my morale – that’s never been a problem for me, don’t even doubt me!
I’m just not a social person, and there are times when I minimize my external communication.
The Yakutsk prison authorities, by the way, helped with this a lot. This year they handed me two postcards: one – for New Year’s and another – for my birthday. Before my departure, they returned not only a box with old letters, which they had kept for one-and-half-years, but also about a hundred new letters which they had collected for a year, apparently deciding to liberate these paper prisoners. Now I’m reading them while on the road. They also returned about ten books sent to me which they had not given to me.
Cursing everything in the world, I’m dragging all this literature around with me from prison to prison. It’s incredibly valuable for me; it would be a shame to throw it away. Make sure nobody sends me any more books, okay? They aren’t sending me what I need, and I can’t throw them away. So I’m trying to give books away at any possibility and drag them around with me. I’m at the end of my rope having to carry this mobile library around with me.
And don’t send packages that I haven’t ordered. A package is allowed once in three months and I’d rather write to Natasha (Natalia Kaplan, Sentsov’s cousin – Editor’s Note) or someone else, maybe you, what exactly I need, and will get it. There were situations when some kind soul would take pity on a poor political prisoner and send a small package of useless trifles. My package limit would get used, and I have to wait for another three months to get what I need.
I’ll write when I arrive.
And, finishing this pressing topic, which, by the way, takes a significant part of an inmate’s life, ask Natasha to deposit 10,000 rubles to my prison account. The money will have caught up with me by the time I arrive.
On a side note, a word about kind deeds which do not always lead to good results. Klimkin (Pavlo Klimkin, Foreign Minister of Ukraine – Editor’s Note) tried to call me on my birthday in July. And Pussy Riot with [Maria] Alekhina came to Yakutsk to support me. This is great! But instead of a call, I was sent to a punitive isolation ward (for the fourth or fifth time) and then transferred to a tougher place – Kharp. The Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia signed the order at the end of July. This doesn’t mean that nothing should be done.
You, free people, can do whatever you think you need to do in support of me and other political prisoners. Just know that local decision-makers have their own logic and they often react that way.
After all, they won’t send me to do time at the North Pole, will they?
In general, everything is okay with me. And I hope I’ll endure this trip and stay at the final destination on the remnants of my health. I hope that you won’t cause a fuss about all this, because I’m not alone, we are many, and I’m far from being in the worst conditions.
I do what I have always done: I read, in English as well, correct and add on to written scripts – this work can be done forever, but I think that I can make another two collections. I’m exercising whenever it’s possible, as well as other small things.
I followed the events in Russia and Ukraine, of course, as much as I could. I can’t say anything good – but perhaps, I can’t see well from here.
Ukraine is struggling but clawing its way in the right direction. Russia has stuck itself in a dead-end for good. And no one knows what to do next.
I still have no doubt in either success or victory, or that everything is going to be good, very good!
Hereon I’m saying goodbye,
Your Oleg Sentsov, 17.09.2017”
