Poroshenko: Awarding Sentsov with Sakharov prize to accelerate his release

By Interfax-Ukraine.

Published Oct. 25, 2018 at 2:05 pm

People rest in front of a poster with a photo of Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov, taken by journalist Anton Naumlyuk, displayed in the shop window in the center of Kyiv on July 5, 2018.

Photo by AFP

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko is confident that the European Parliament’s award of the Andrei Sakharov Prize to Oleh Sentsov, illegally convicted and imprisoned in the Russian Federation, will speed up his release.

“I am grateful to the European Parliament for an important decision – to provide the prestigious Sakharov Prize to a Ukrainian Oleh Sentsov … I am sure that this decision of the European Parliament will bring closer Oleh Sentsov’s release,” Poroshenko wrote on Facebook on Thursday.