U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker believes it is necessary to promptly release Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who is serving his sentence in a Russian penal colony and whose health has deteriorated recently.

"Russia should release Oleh Sentsov before it has another death on its hands. "Confession" apparently extracted under torture... Russia should be better than this. #SaveOlegSentsov #MagnitskyAct," Volker said on Twitter.

In August 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don ruled to sentence Sentsov, who had been detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a maximum-security penal colony for setting up a terrorist group on the peninsula.

Sentsov has been on a hunger strike since May 14, 2018, demanding that all Ukrainian citizens held in Russia "for political reasons" be released. His relatives said that his health has seriously deteriorated.

On August 9, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada's Human Rights Commissioner Liudmyla Denisova published Sentsov's photograph taken in the colony and sent by the Russian side.