You're reading: Sobchak talks to Sentsov by video linkup, says he refuses to end hunger strike

Politician Ksenia Sobchak said she talked to Oleh Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned in Russia, via a video linkup and that he refuses to end his hunger strike.

“I have just talked with Oleh Sentsov by video phone. I tried to convince him to stop his hunger strike, but he is full of resolve and asking me not to try to convince him to change his decision,” Sobchak wrote on Twitter.

“He really has lost two teeth, he says he doesn’t have Barlow’s disease yet. I just felt very sorry for him. He is thin and pale,” she wrote.

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said earlier she had reached an agreement with the Federal Penitentiary Service on a video linkup with Sentsov at the request of Senator Lyudmila Narusova, the mother of Ksenia Sobchak.

The Northern Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Sentsov, who was detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penal colony in August 2015 over an attempt to create a terrorist group in Crimea. The Russian authorities consider him a Russian citizen.

On May 16, Sentsov went on hunger strike, demanding that all Ukrainian citizens in custody in Russia be released.