Situation with Sentsov's citizenship in stalemate, Ukrainian Justice Ministry should resolve it with Russian colleagues - lawyer
MOSCOW. Oct 21 (Interfax) - The defense team of Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who is sentenced to 20 years in a penal colony in the case of preparation of terror attacks in Crimea, insists that he is not a Russia citizen.
"He does not have a Russian passport. We believe he is not a Russian citizen, because he did not file a relevant application and undergo the procedures required to become a Russian citizen," Sentov's lawyer Dmitry Dinze told Interfax on Friday.
The lawyer said that the adopted federal constitutional law on Crimea's accession to Russia contravenes the federal law 'On citizenship', in accordance with which a passport is the confirmation of the citizenship. According to the federal constitutional law, residents of the peninsula who had not filed a declaration on renunciation of Russian citizenship within a month automatically became Russian citizens.
As part of the procedure initiated regarding Sentsov the defense team received a response from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office mentioning his dual citizenship, Dinze said.
"The Prosecutor General's Office acknowledged a fact of Sentsov's dual citizenship then, but they failed to manage this situation," he said.
He added that the situation involving the citizenship of his client is currently contradictory.
"The situation is as good as in a stalemate; we will work on it with Ukrainian Justice Ministry, which will have to resolve this issue with Russian Justice Ministry somehow," lawyer said.
In turn, Svetlana Sidorkina, the lawyer of Oleksandr Kolchenko sentenced along with Sentsov, said that her client is also not a Russian citizen.
"We believe that he is a Ukrainian citizen, because he never obtained a Russian passport, he has only a Ukrainian one," Sidorkina told Interfax.
"Kolchenko was made a citizen, when Crimea, the resident of which he is, joined [Russia], but he does not agree with this decision," she said.
Earlier on Friday Ukrainian Deputy Justice Minister Serhiy Petukhov said that the Russian Justice Ministry refused to extradite Sentsov to Ukraine for the purposes of serving the sentence in his homeland because he is a Russian citizen.
In August 2015, Rostov-on-Don's Northern Caucasus District Military Court sentenced film director Oleh Sentsov, who had been detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penal colony for organizing a terrorist group in the territory of the peninsula. Kolchenko was sentenced to ten years in the same case.
In early May, Sentsov and Kolchenko filed the forms for their extradition to Ukraine.
The Russian Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of Sentsov and Kolchenko on June 1.
