Sentsov told how he was “morally raped” in Crimea
Oleg Sentsov, who calls himself a director, who was convicted in Russia of terrorism and released as part of a prisoner exchange, gave his first interview to the Ukrainian Hromadsky TV, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I came to Maidan, like everyone else, to live in a free country. Maidan is freedom. And in Crimea there was pressure from Russian occupiers and collaborators who welcomed Russia. Someone passively welcomed, saying that life would be better under Russia. And those who were seriously against - they had a serious fight, and they took a lot of risks. The atmosphere was very difficult, I imagined what the Russian Federation and Putin’s regime were, and that it did not bring anything good for us. There was a feeling that you were being very mentally raped, and this atmosphere was very pressing,” Sentsov said.
Journalists asked what happened to Sentsov’s relatives after his arrest.
“Thank God, they didn’t put pressure on me through my relatives, and at least in this regard they follow the code, that they are fighting with me, and not with my children, and this seems to be normal. There was no pressure,” said the “director.”
He admitted that some of his relatives supported the reunification of Crimea with Russia.
“Everything fell apart for me. Half of my friends are for Russia. And the family is divided in half too. The split ran through the entire Crimea. Life there did not improve as promised. Those who wanted to leave left. I directly felt the air thickening, it was suffocation. Over the past five years it has only gotten worse. Some people live, others are fine. Someone left. Everyone who couldn’t live there left,” Sentsov said.
“I have pro-European views. I want to live like in Europe, according to their standards. I don’t want to live how they live in Russia and how they lived in the USSR. I was born in the USSR, and I know what today’s Russia is like, and I didn’t like it even then, before Crimea. This is a dead end.
Russians have hatred, even contempt for Ukraine, Europe, the USA. And this is instilled every minute, no matter what channel you turn on. All five years pass through. People are saturated, they don’t perceive it differently,” the “director” added.
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