PACE and the newly elected President of the Assembly Liliane Maury Pasquier should be struggling for all of those Ukrainians, who are now illegally detained in Russia. Oleksiy Honcharenko, the Ukrainian MP and the representative of the Ukrainian delegation in the Assembly said this during his speech at PACE session.
The lawmaker reiterated that the Council of Europe is supposed to protect the basic democratic values, the supremacy of law et cetera. He turned the authority's attention to the issue of the release of political prisoners.
'The most terrifying situation is observed in terms of detention of Ukrainian political prisoners, who fell victims of the Putinist regime, which makes over 70 people in the occupied Crimea, Donbas and the Russian Federation. Some of them, including filmmaker Oleg Sentsov announced a hunger strike. Sentsov has been starving for more than 40 days. His life is at huge risk, and it's the matter of life and death,' the lawmaker said.
Honcharenko urged the PACE MPs to join efforts in this area. 'Everyone can contribute to saving lives of these 70 prisoners. You can turn to the Russian embassy in your country or raise the issue in your Parliament. Lives and deaths of these people depend on what we're doing at PACE', he said. The Ukrainian MP added that his PACE colleagues should not surrender to Russia's acts of blackmail or let Russia buy any acts of grace for the Kremlin's sins - since 'it is about Ukraine and entire Europe'.
