By Matthew Dubas
The 42-year-old filmmaker, who has been on a hunger strike for the past 100 days, sits in a Russian jail and has been there since 2014, the year Russian military and special forces seized Crimea, Mr. Sentsov's homeland Ukraine.
The Kremlin shows no signs of caving to Western pressure to release this innocent man, who Russia claims is a terrorist, for his statement that Crimea is Ukraine and his refusal against taking forced Russian citizenship. Russia saw this as such a threat to its agenda that it sentenced him to 20 years in a Siberian prison. In Russia, a different opinion can get you thrown in jail.
Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemiliev, who is banned from entering Crimea by Russia (which occupies the peninsula and is using it for military purposes in the Black Sea and to project an image of power in the region in an attempt to destabilize the West and its allies), has urged Sentsov to quit the hunger strike and not give his tormentors the satisfaction of his death by his own hand (as his captors would say). Mr. Dzhemiliev is a Soviet-era dissident who went on a hunger strike for over 80 days to protest against the regime before being force-fed via a feeding tube.
So what can be done? We can hope to change Sentsov's mind to end the hunger strike in the interest of continuing the fight that so many Ukrainians today and before him, as well as other Soviet citizens have endured in their struggle against the totalitarian system.
The Soviet system imploded because of the incapacity of the centralized structure of the government to respond to market demands and changes, much of that system has remained unchanged under Putinism, as evidenced by the state-run oil and gas monopoly companies Rosneft and Gazprom, which Russia has weaponized as a foreign policy tool.
What the response comes down to is based on political will. Russia is doing everything it can to undermine European unity and a crippling response in the face of Russian aggression.
The U.S. has led the way on sanctions in response to Russia's chemical weapons attack in the U.K. Even the U.K. has not responded with sanctions regarding that attack on its own soil, leaving many asking why? A delayed response is better than no response at all. This vacuum of leadership in Europe is something that Putin has taken full advantage of, beginning with Georgia in 2008, Ukraine since 2014 and Syria, as it flaunts international law without consequence, thanks to its veto vote at the U.N. Security Council.
Russia's ties with Austria (Nord Stream 2 tech and business interests) and Hungary (nuclear power plants from Russia and energy), and to a lesser extent, Germany, show a mood of getting back to business as usual as seen with the promotion of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline by certain sectors of the political and business circles. Russia's influence in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Serbia and others should be the focus of Europe's actions to strengthen solidarity, but Russia does not seem to be a threat according to these countries.
The 42-year-old filmmaker, who has been on a hunger strike for the past 100 days, sits in a Russian jail and has been there since 2014, the year Russian military and special forces seized Crimea, Mr. Sentsov's homeland Ukraine.
The Kremlin shows no signs of caving to Western pressure to release this innocent man, who Russia claims is a terrorist, for his statement that Crimea is Ukraine and his refusal against taking forced Russian citizenship. Russia saw this as such a threat to its agenda that it sentenced him to 20 years in a Siberian prison. In Russia, a different opinion can get you thrown in jail.
Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemiliev, who is banned from entering Crimea by Russia (which occupies the peninsula and is using it for military purposes in the Black Sea and to project an image of power in the region in an attempt to destabilize the West and its allies), has urged Sentsov to quit the hunger strike and not give his tormentors the satisfaction of his death by his own hand (as his captors would say). Mr. Dzhemiliev is a Soviet-era dissident who went on a hunger strike for over 80 days to protest against the regime before being force-fed via a feeding tube.
So what can be done? We can hope to change Sentsov's mind to end the hunger strike in the interest of continuing the fight that so many Ukrainians today and before him, as well as other Soviet citizens have endured in their struggle against the totalitarian system.
The Soviet system imploded because of the incapacity of the centralized structure of the government to respond to market demands and changes, much of that system has remained unchanged under Putinism, as evidenced by the state-run oil and gas monopoly companies Rosneft and Gazprom, which Russia has weaponized as a foreign policy tool.
What the response comes down to is based on political will. Russia is doing everything it can to undermine European unity and a crippling response in the face of Russian aggression.
The U.S. has led the way on sanctions in response to Russia's chemical weapons attack in the U.K. Even the U.K. has not responded with sanctions regarding that attack on its own soil, leaving many asking why? A delayed response is better than no response at all. This vacuum of leadership in Europe is something that Putin has taken full advantage of, beginning with Georgia in 2008, Ukraine since 2014 and Syria, as it flaunts international law without consequence, thanks to its veto vote at the U.N. Security Council.
Russia's ties with Austria (Nord Stream 2 tech and business interests) and Hungary (nuclear power plants from Russia and energy), and to a lesser extent, Germany, show a mood of getting back to business as usual as seen with the promotion of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline by certain sectors of the political and business circles. Russia's influence in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Serbia and others should be the focus of Europe's actions to strengthen solidarity, but Russia does not seem to be a threat according to these countries.
Similar lobbying
efforts by Russia are underway across Europe and the U.S., but more
widespread and targeted U.S. sanctions against Russia are on the way,
some have already been
implemented and some are set to go into effect in November. Already the
ruble is sliding, the Russian economy is shrinking and Russian
billionaires are being downgraded to millionaires, with pension reform
leaving a bad taste in the Russian peoples' mouths, bringing them out
onto the streets of major Russian cities by the tens of thousands. The
Russian people, it seems, are the ones who have the power to stop
Putinism, while the regime would like the people to think that they are
powerless to change things (as is the case with all authoritarian
systems).
Matthew Dubas is editor of
the The Ukrainian Weekly. The
newspaper is distributed throughout the United States and Canada and serves as a major source of
news and information for the Ukrainian-American community. He has
reported on many of the country’s political and social conflicts and worked
with ambassadors, politicians, policy advisers, activists and scholars on a
range of issues concerning Ukraine. The views expressed by Mr. Dubas do not
necessarily reflect those of the publication's management or editorial
staff.
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