Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov has told about his health condition and plans in a letter to actress and public activist Rimma Zyubina.
A photo copy of the letter, dated July 3, was posted on Zyubina’s Facebook page on Saturday.
“I am feeling normal, despite the 51st day (into the hunger strike), of course, my health is not as wonderful as might appear to some authorized human rights campaigners: everyone sees what they want to see,” the letter said.
Letters do not arrive quickly, Sentsov said. “Speaking in general, a reply comes in a week, but this is a normal speed for this system. Because ordinary paper letters take a month to arrive, and just as long on the way back,” Sentsov said.
As for the telephone communication, “it is very difficult to get through: for calls from abroad, there is just one phone booth for the whole camp,” he said.
Sentsov also wrote about the stage production of the “Numbers” play he wrote in prison. “Thank you all for what you are doing. I hope the production will turn out okay and turn out good,” he said.
It was reported that Sentsov is held at the Russian “White Bear” prison in the Yamalo-Nenets town of Labytnangi. He was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of a terror plot and in August 2015 sentenced by a North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don to 20 years of imprisonment at a maximum-security facility.
On May 14, 2018, Sentsov announced a hunger strike to demand the release of all Ukrainians that were imprisoned in Russia illegally.
In early July he was visited by his cousin Natalia Kaplan. Sentsov lost 15 kilograms during the hunger strike, she said. His health condition was satisfactory, test results not very good but “nothing critical” thanks to drip feeding, Kaplan said.
