Sentsov says fighting against Putin regime, not Russia:
By the Crimean Desk Of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
KYIV -- Oleh Sentsov, the Ukrainian film director who was held in Russian prisons for more than five years, has accused Russian authorities of wanting to "enslave" Ukraine, and he called on all Ukrainians to work to end the ongoing war in the eastern part of the country.
Speaking just 16 days after his return to Ukraine, Sentsov also told RFE/RL in an interview that for him the fight was not against Russia or Russians themselves, but against what he called President Vladimir Putin's regime.
"[When I say] fight, as I said, it means, in general, to work and struggle to counteract Putin's regime that wants, in the first place, to enslave Ukraine," he said in the September 23 interview.
"This means an end to the war in the Donbas, the return of our prisoners, the return of Crimea. They are all things that every Ukrainian is obliged to fight for. It does not mean that someone is obliged to go somewhere and blow up things. That is not it," he said.
A native of Crimea, Sentsov was a vocal opponent of Russia's seizure and annexation of the Ukrainian region in March 2014. The film director was arrested on May 11, 2014, and a Russian court convicted him the following August on terrorism charges and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.
Human rights activists and Western governments repeatedly called on the Russian authorities to release Sentsov, saying his arrest and trial were politically motivated.
On September 7, Sentsov was released as part of a swap of dozens of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia. It was considered a major breakthrough for the two sides in the conflict that pits Ukrainian government forces against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The fighting has killed more than 13,000 people and displaced more than 1 million since April 2014.
"I am not fighting against Russia. I am fighting against Putin's regime. This is not the same. These things should not be confused," Sentsov told RFE/RL.
"You need to understand that the problem is not in prisoners. The problem is the fact that prisoners exist because we have been attacked. That is, there is a specific issue of prisoners and a broader issue of the aggression against us. Without the aggression, there would not have been any prisoners," he said.
There's no definite figure for how many Ukrainians are being held in Russian prisons, though activists and reporters estimate the number to be in the dozens.
Senstov's first feature film, Gamer, debuted at a festival in Rotterdam in 2012, and at the time of the mass protests that roiled Ukraine in late 2013 and early 2014, he was working on his second feature film, called Rhino.
U.S. soldier plotted attack, wanted to fight with far-right Ukrainian paramilitary, prosecutors say:
By Mike Eckel
U.S. prosecutors say a U.S. Army soldier allegedly plotted to bomb a U.S. news network, and sought to travel to Ukraine to fight with a far-right nationalist paramilitary group known as the Azov Battalion.
Documents filed on September 23 in U.S. District Court in Kansas said that Jarrett William Smith had been charged with distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction.
Smith, 24, was stationed at Fort Riley, a major U.S. Army base in Kansas, according to the documents.
According to the charging documents, Smith discussed on Facebook in 2016 and later dates that he was interested in traveling to Ukraine to fight with the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary unit that has fought against Russia-backed separatists and also espouses an ultranationalist ideology.
Prosecutors also said Smith discussed a plan to kill so-called "antifa" activists, militant left-wing activists who often engage in violent opposition to right-wing groups.
Smith also allegedly described how to build a bomb that could be triggered using a cell phone. He also allegedly suggested building a car bomb and targeting an unnamed U.S. news network.
Smith was arrested on September 21. It wasn't clear if he had a lawyer, or when his first court appearance was scheduled.
The issue of U.S. white-supremacist organizations being drawn to Ukrainian groups is a concern that was raised by U.S. law enforcement as recently as 2017.
That year, the FBI warned that Azov's military wing was "believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States-based white supremacy organizations."
The statement came as part of case against a California man who traveled to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, to participate in a fight club with Ukrainian ultranationalists.
The founder of the Azov Battalion, Andriy Biletskiy, later went on to found a Ukrainian political party known as the National Corps, which has been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a "nationalist hate group."