Kolchenko / wikipedia.org

Russian human rights activist Nikolai Shchur says Russian jailers allowed Ukrainian political prisoner Oleksandr Kolchenko to hold a long meeting with his mother on July 28-30.

According to the lawyer, who met with his client on the morning of June 22, Kolchenko is still in a medical unit. Now he is not alone in the ward, but with a "cellmate," Shchur said following a phone conversation with Kolchenko's lawyer.

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"Now he weighs about 62 kilograms. Each of his feeding is filmed on a video camera," Shchur said.

In addition, Kolchenko was allowed to hold a long meeting with his mother on July 28-30.

According to the human rights activist, many letters are being brought now to Kolchenko, including in Ukrainian and other languages. "That wasn't there before," he added.

Shchur also noted the political prisoner held in Russia wants to meet with the Ukrainian ombudsperson.

"On June 18, he was summoned to the head of the colony, where he was expected to talk with about 10 persons: the regional ombudsman, representatives of the public monitoring commission, etc. Oleksandr had a short conversation with them: they asked him about his health; he answered and refused to communicate with them. 'I want to meet with the Ukrainian ombudsperson,'" Shchur quoted Kolchenko as saying.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Russia's security forces detained Sentsov together with Oleksandr Kolchenko in occupied Crimea in May 2014 on charges of organizing terrorist attacks on the peninsula.

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In August 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court in Russia's Rostov-on-Don sentenced Sentsov to 20 years in a high-security penal colony. Kolchenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Both men pleaded not guilty.

Kolchenko is serving his sentence in Correctional Colony No. 6 (Kopeysk, Russia's Chelyabinsk region).

Sentsov declared hunger strike on May 14 indefinitely. He went on hunger strike against the actions of the Kremlin, demanding the release of all the Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia.

On May 31, Kolchenko went on a hunger strike in a Russian penal colony in support of Oleh Sentsov.

On June 7, it became known that he had stopped the hunger strike. "Oleksandr Kolchenko today stopped the hunger strike. In his words, he is very weak and he has already begun to faint. His blood sugar level fell and he was already given glucose. During the hunger strike, his weight dropped to 54 kilograms," his lawyer said.