Freed Russia prisoners confirm torture, false testimony offers by Russian officials

Former political prisoner Oleg Sentsov gave on Sept. 10
his first press conference since his Saturday arrival in Ukraine after spending
more than five years in Russian prisons. In his view, the Putin administration
is not interested in peace with Ukraine. The conclusion of Putin’s presidential
term in 2024 offers the chance for change, but “the majority is indifferent and
that doesn’t concern them,” he said about the Russians he met. “Some are
intensely for Putin, but they are few. Some are intensely against him, but they
are few as well. The majority is simply indifferent. It’s a swamp and I don’t
know whether some kind of change is possible. Predicting a revolution is
impossible.”

Sentsov said he is open to getting involved in
politics, but plans to be involved in producing films while living in Kyiv, the
pravda.com.ua news site said. In general, Ukraine is moving in the right
direction, he said. During the 2014 presidential elections, Russian officials
offered to reduce his prison sentence to seven years (from 20) if he alleged
criminal activity by one of the EuroMaidan leaders. “I said ‘No’ immediately,
not contemplating it and never having regretted it. And when they gave me 20
years, I wasn’t surprised because they did what they promised.”

In his turn, Mykola Karpiuk, a Ukrainian
nationalist paramilitary arrested at the Russian border in March 2014,
described the intimidation and torture he endured during his imprisonment. This
included electric shocks, sleep deprivation, and poisoning with psychotropic
drugs, he said in a Sept. 9 interview with the independent ATR Crimean Tatar
television network. He said another Ukrainian political prisoner, Stanislav
Klykh, had a microchip that was involuntarily implanted and used to influence
his nervous system and trigger involuntary panic attacks. Klykh was reported to
have lost his psychological stability in the fall of 2016 from the alleged
torture and was admitted to psychiatric hospital in the summer of 2018. Yet to
speak to reporters after his Sept. 7 return to Kyiv, Klykh received special
medical attention after his arrival, news reports said.