KYIV – As World Cup host Russia was losing to Uruguay 0-3 in the quadrennial soccer tournament on June 25, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was in the 43rd day of his hunger strike at a Siberian prison and 44 pounds lighter from when he first started refusing solid food.
Another political prisoner, Volodymyr Balukh, was in the 99th day of his, at first partial and subsequently full, hunger strike in a Crimean prison. The farmer had hung a Ukrainian flag atop his house in the Russia-annexed Ukrainian peninsula, according to human rights groups, and was charged with “insulting an official” for calling Russian police officers “occupiers.”