Oleg Sentsov

Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian director best known for his 2011 film, Gamer, lived in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, and was active in protests against Viktor F. Yanukovych, the former pro-Kremlin president of Ukraine. As Russia seized control of Crimea in 2014, Sentsov became an outspoken critic of the annexation. In May 2014, he was detained, and in August 2015 he was sentenced to 20 years in a Russian prison on charges of terrorism. During his detention, he was unsuccessfully tortured to extract a confession. He continued to write and even direct from his prison cell. On May 14, 2018, Sentsov declared an indefinite hunger strike, which lasted for 145 days. Meanwhile, international outcry over his detention mounted. On September 7, 2019, Senstov was freed as part of a historic prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine. He continues to fight for freedom of expression and freedom for other Ukrainian political prisoners. Sentsov was the winner of the 2017 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award.

From the Artist:

My time in the revolutionary movement is completely separate from my artistic career. The moment when Russia brought its army into my homeland, Crimea, it was logical to me that I would protect my homeland. Two months before the arrest, I worked very hard, helping soldiers, organizing protests, printing informational material, talking to international media about what was going on there. What happened next was that Russian FSB agents had this idea to show everyone, the rest of the world, that there are terrorists in Crimea and it’s Ukraine who is an aggressor, and Russia is the one trying to save Crimea from the aggressor. Then they picked four activists and detained them, tortured them, and tried to extract from them that they were trying to launch a terrorist attack. Among those four people, I was the most well-known, the oldest, the one with connections, specifically because I had also taken part in the revolution in Kiev. That’s why they wanted to cast me as a leader of this terrorist group.

I managed to send a message to journalists I knew, and the support of the community started immediately, and then the international community, and that really helped to stop this. Fortunately, the government did not put pressure on my mom and my kids, who had to stay in Crimea. However, from the general public, there was a certain distancing in the beginning. But then in the end, when more information was available, I had a lot of support, especially from the Crimean Tatar community. There were some letters that I received during this first year of isolation, and from them I could at least get the sense that a movement was starting. 

I was traveling from one prison to the next, but they were basically camps—penal colonies where you stay in one big building with other prisoners. They don’t want you to stay a person anymore, so it’s a constant fight for your dignity. In one camp, for example, they force you to march around as a group in a very specific order, like a parade during the World War victory celebrations. They make all the prisoners do this together. This is a passive way of losing your dignity. What I was doing was saying, “No, I’m not going to do that.” And I was walking as I pleased, without other prisoners, and as a result I was put into the isolation room, I was punished. That was happening for half a year before the hunger strike. But as soon as the hunger strike started, things changed.

My experience is facing Russia as an aggressor. And there is no advice that you could give to Russians to avoid prison—only sitting in your car with a Russian flag and keeping your mouth shut. This is the only thing you can do to save yourself, and even then it’s not certain. My advice is not to protect yourself but really to go and fight. Because this is the only way the situation in Russia can be changed.