The family of Oleg Sentsov, the Ukrainian film director imprisoned in Russia who is on hunger strike, have called on President Vladimir Putin to release him before the World Cup, which kicks off on Thursday. “He says he’s going to carry his hunger strike through to the end, and Oleg is the kind of person who doesn’t go back on his word,” Sentsov’s cousin Natalia Kaplan told the Guardian. “We have very little time left and I really hope that Putin will take the decision to release him and all the Ukrainian political prisoners before the World Cup.”

Sentsov has been on hunger strike since 14 May, saying he will stop only if all Ukrainian political prisoners are released. His lawyer, Dmitry Dinze, who visited Sentsov in prison last week, said his client had lost 8kg since he began his hunger strike and was at risk of kidney failure. Prison officials have said they will begin force-feeding Sentsov if his health deteriorates to a critical point.Sentsov was jailed for 20 years by a Russian military court in 2015 on charges of terrorism. He was accused of deliberately setting fire to the offices of United Russia, a pro-Kremlin political party, in Crimea. He denied all charges and said he was being punished for organising peaceful resistance to the Russian takeover of the peninsula in 2014.(theguardian)…[+]