Russia’s mainstream media and President Vladimir Putin continue to remain silent about numerous prisoners of Putin’s undeclared war against Ukraine. Pilot Nadiya Savchenko and 30 other Ukrainian service members are still being illegally held in Russian jails. Taking hostages is one of Russia’s Hamas-style tactics against its perceived enemies – foreign and domestic. In that sense, Nadiya is much more than a prisoner. To Putin and his regime, she is the symbol of Ukraine itself: spirited, strong and unbroken. In a video of her interrogation, Nadiya said that she does not expect to return home alive, but is not afraid. The brave pilot has entered the third week of her hunger strike, during relative media silence. In the meantime, Savchenko’s attorneys are fighting an uphill battle, seeking justice in kangaroo courts of Russia’s Banana Republic.
To break the media silence, activists all over the world are taking Twitter by storm with a trending campaign, #FreeSavchenko. Appealing to the conscience of Russia’s leading gray apparatchik is not what truly matters. The collective conscience of the world must be awakened to speak out and take action against many injustices perpetrated by Russia in its undeclared war against Ukraine. While American self-professed truth-seeker Oliver Stone was having a tea party with Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych, he didn’t raise any questions about the unlawful detention of Ukraine’s POWs in Russian prisons.
