No one has offered Ukrainian filmmaker Sentsov convicted in Russia to apply for pardon - lawyer
MOSCOW/KYIV. May 18 (Interfax) - Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who was convicted to twenty years in prison for preparing terrorist attacks in Crimea, was not offered to apply for pardon, his lawyer Vladimir Samokhin said.
Vira Savchenko, the sister of Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison, said earlier on Wednesday, citing information received from lawyer Ilya Novikov, that Ukrainian citizens Oleh Sentsov, Serhiy Litvinov, and Yuriy Soloshenko had been offered to apply for pardon.
"I don't confirm this information. I don't know where Vira Savchenko received this information from. I know that Oleh Sentsov is currently in a penal colony in Yakutia awaiting a decision on his extradition to Ukraine, where he will serve his term," Samokhin told Interfax on Wednesday.
He said that as a defense lawyer he would have been notified if Sentsov had been made such an offer.
In the meantime, it was reported on May 11 that Ukrainians Hennadiy Afanasyev and Yuriy Soloshenko, who were convicted in Russia and for whom extradition requests have been received from Ukraine, had been transferred to Moscow.
"They arrived in Moscow on May 2: Afanasyev arrived from Syktyvkar by plane and Yuriy Soloshenko came form Nizhny Novgorod by train," Zoya Svetova, a member of the Moscow Public Observer Commission, who visited them in the detention facility, told Interfax then.
Svetova believes "there are not many doubts that the transfer of two Ukrainian prisoners on the same day are not connected."
In March, the Ukrainian justice minister said the Ukrainian Justice Ministry had asked Russia to extradite Ukrainian citizens Oleh Sentsov, Hennadiy Afanasyev, Oleksandr Kolchenko, and Yuriy Soloshenko for humanitarian reasons.
