Here's more from Current Time on Sentsov's presser in Kyiv:

Ukraine's Sentsov, Kolchenko Hold First Presser After Release From Russian Custody

KYIV -- Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov and activist Oleksandr Kolchenko have thanked all those who supported them while they were in Russian custody.

Sentsov and Kolchenko spoke on September 10 at their first news conference in Kyiv following their released in a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.

The two countries exchanged a total of 70 prisoners on September 7 -- the first major prisoner swap between the two countries since 2017.

Kolchenko and Sentsov were arrested in the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, after Russia seized the Ukrainian region. A Russian court in 2015 convicted them of planning to commit terrorist acts -- a charge considered by both men and their supporters as politically motivated.

"First of all I would like to express thanks to everyone who supported us and contributed to our liberation," Kolchenko told reporters.

Sentsov thanked those who "supported us and managed to save us," adding that Ukrainians who are still being held in Russia and eastern Ukraine, where government forces have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since April 2014, must not be forgotten.

"We have to remember that along with our people there in prisons in Russia there are many Russians who are fighting for themselves, for a free Russia and for our Ukraine," he said.

"They are our brothers and we must not divide them from us," Sentsov said.

A tweet from the new Ukrainian prime minister:

Here is today's map of the latest situation in the Donbas conflict zone according to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. (CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

Here's another news item, this time from the Crimea Desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:

Ukraine Charges Retired Russian Soldier, Two Others In Crimean Tatar's Deadly Kidnapping

Ukrainian authorities say they have identified the suspected kidnappers of a Crimean Tatar activist who was abducted in broad daylight more than five years ago as he protested Moscow's seizure of Crimea -- and who turned up dead weeks later.

Ukrainian prosecutors alleged on September 10 that two members of a pro-Russian militia were acting on orders from a Russian military veteran when they abducted Reshat Ametov, 39, on a central square in the Crimean capital of Simferopol in March 2014 as he staged a one-man protest against Russia's military incursion.

Two weeks later, Ametov's body was discovered in a forest 60 kilometers east of Simferopol, and he is widely seen in Ukraine and among Crimean Tatars as an early martyr to the cause of opposing Russia's takeover.

"Thanks to the cooperation of the prosecutor's office, the police, and human rights organizations, the crime was solved today,” Hunduz Mamedov, Kyiv's top prosecutor for Crimea, said in a statement.

Kyiv’s police directorate responsible for Crimea identified the two suspected kidnappers as 44-year-old Oleksandyr Bahlyuk and 33-year-old Oleksandyr Rudenko.

They are accused of carrying out the abduction under the direction of 53-year-old Yevgeny Skripnik, described by Ukraine as a retired Russian serviceman who later took part in Russia-backed military operations against Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine has issued international warrants for the arrest of the three men, Ukrainian prosecutors said. They have been charged with aggravated kidnapping, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Ukrainian authorities conducted the investigation remotely, as they do not have access to Crimean territory, which Russia seized in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum deemed illegitimate by 100 members of the United Nations.

Video of Ametov’s abduction was published online weeks after the incident. It shows him being frog-marched into a car just meters in front of a man wearing a red armband typical of so-called "self-defense" units that coordinated with Russian forces in Crimea at the time.

It was the last time Ametov was known to have been seen alive.

In a statement in March, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission to Ukraine said it had "received information that indicates Crimean self-defense's involvement in Ametov's disappearance and killing."

The mission told RFE/RL at the time that its information was based on interviews with "a number of people," including Ametov's relatives and activists at pro-Ukrainian rallies at the time of his disappearance, as well as an analysis of the video of his abduction.

In 2017, then-President Petro Poroshenko posthumously awarded Ametov the nation's highest title -- Hero of Ukraine.

Parliament passes bill on presidential impeachment:

By RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service

KYIV -- Ukraine's parliament has adopted a bill spelling out procedures for a presidential impeachment.

The law was backed by 245 lawmakers at a second reading on September 10, immediately after the text was passed a first time.

Under the new legislation, parliament first initiates impeachment proceedings, which must be approved by the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court, and then passed by three-quarters of lawmakers.

Ruslan Stefanchuk, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's representative to parliament, said the vote showed the president was committed to keeping his election pledge to clean up Ukrainian politics and tackle corruption.

However, opponents said the law was rushed through without proper consultation and that the text itself was so convoluted as to be meaningless.

"In fact, it is only a facade of reform that does not change anything," said Roman Lozinsky of the Holos (Voice) party.

Zelenskiy, a 41-year-old comedian-turned-politician who has pledged to "break the system" in Ukrainian politics, was elected in April.

His Servant of the People party then took a solid majority of 254 parliamentary seats in the 450-seat legislature following snap general elections in July.

Last week, lawmakers voted to strip members of the chamber of immunity from prosecution. (w/AP and Reuters)

Sentsov plans to "shoot films and live" following release:

By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service

KYIV -- More than five years after his arrest in Crimea, and just three days after his release from Russian custody as part of a prisoner swap with Ukraine, filmmaker Oleh Sentsov says his plans are simple. "Do the two most wonderful things on this planet: shoot films and live."

Speaking to a large number of journalists in the Ukrainian House in downtown Kyiv on September 10, Sentsov and another freed Ukrainian activist, Oleksandr Kolchenko, expressed thanks to "all who supported us and contributed to our liberation."

The two were released from Russian custody in a prisoner swap between Kyiv and Moscow on September 7 that saw the two countries exchange a total of 70 prisoners in the first major prisoner swap between them since 2017.

Russia took control of the Black Sea peninsula in 2014 and has backed the separatists in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has left more than 13,000 people dead over the last five years.

Sentsov, a Crimean native who opposed Russia's 2014 takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula, was arrested by the Moscow-imposed Crimean authorities on May 11, 2014, and charged with planning the fire-bombing of pro-Russian organizations in Crimea.

A Russian court convicted him on multiple terrorism charges on August 25, 2015, and sentenced him to 20 years in a maximum-security prison.

Human rights activists and Western governments repeatedly called on the Russian authorities to release the film director, saying his arrest and trial were politically motivated.

"As for Crimea, I will only go back there in a tank.... My words shouldn't be taken literally," Sentsov said with a wry smile, adding that he was going to push to secure the release of Ukrainians "illegally held in Russia and Donbas," referring to the eastern region where Russian-backed separatist are battling Ukrainian troops.

Imprisoned in Russia's northern Yamalo-Nenets region, Sentsov held a 145-day hunger strike last year, demanding that Russia release 64 fellow Ukrainians he considered political prisoners.

Sentsov called Russian political prisoners in Russian prisons "our brothers," and thanked Ukrainian and foreign journalists for what he called "doing their jobs so that we could be free now."

"Now we have to think about the liberation of our people who remain in custody in Russia and Donbas. We must remember that along with our people there in prisons in Russia there are many Russians who are fighting for themselves, for a free Russia and for our Ukraine. They are our brothers and we must not divide them from us," Sentsov said.

"The situation we have now after Russia attacked Ukraine is an information conflict. And [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's aggression against Ukraine is supported by many in Russia, due to the work of the Russian propaganda. I would like to applaud journalists here who are doing a great job," he said.

Sentsov also said that the prisoner swap "was not unexpected," as there were many years of negotiations on the issue because "the Russian system never accepts its mistakes," or never changes its position regarding arrests.

Still, the swap provides some momentum to bringing the conflict to an end, he said.

Ukrainian "President [Volodymyr Zelenskiy] said that there is a second stage of the prisoner swap and I hope that the more than 100 guys who remain in Russian custody will be released soon. I hope that Zelenskiy knows what he is doing, and he will do everything that is good for our country."

"With the new government [in Ukraine], Russia has a chance to reset its relations with Ukraine. President Zelenskiy has made it clear that he wants to finish this war," Sentsov added, though he expressed doubts that Moscow is eager to finish the conflict.

"No matter how much a wolf tries to disguise as a sheep, it still has its fangs. However, Russia still wants to preserve its presence in the European community and the recent change of the government in Ukraine is a chance for Moscow to improve its ties with Europe. But it is not possible to say that Russia wants to stop the war, to return Crimea to Ukraine and get out of Donbas," he said.

According to Sentsov, he realized while in Russian custody that the majority of Russians are indifferent to the political situation in their country.

Talking about his arrest and imprisonment in Russia, Sentsov said that the terrorism charges against him were fabricated as he openly protested Crimea's annexation by Russia.

"I supported Ukrainian military units in Crimea [during annexation] in terms of their evacuation and the evacuation of their family members. I organized protest actions, such as an auto-march with Ukrainian flags, events near [Ukrainian writer and poet] Taras Shevchenko's monument in Simferopol to demonstrate that there are people in Crimea who are against the annexation. I did everything I could," Sentsov said, adding that he also refused to officially obtain a Russian passport after Moscow said all Crimea residents would become Russian citizens.

Sentsov also said that he brought to Ukraine 15 notebooks with novels, scripts, and scenarios he wrote while in Russian custody.

"I was allowed to write there. I wrote in the night to avoid noise.... On the third day of my hunger strike [in 2018] I felt that I wanted to write about my feelings. There was a risk that they could take all my scripts away, but they did not, as my handwriting was so bad that they were unable to understand what I wrote," he said.

"I wrote a 145-day diary while on hunger strike. They did not take that from me," Sentsov said, adding that with his hunger strike he had "managed to attract the world's attention to all Ukrainian prisoners in Russia."