Russia illegally keeping 181 Ukrainian political prisoners in Crimea

The president’s representative office in Crimea said this in a Facebook post, Ukrinform reports.

"Repressions and criminal prosecutions of our citizens in occupied Crimea are becoming more and more brutal... According to information available to the representative office, the Russian Federation is illegally keeping 181 political prisoners, 116 of them are Crimean Tatars. Of the total number of illegally detained individuals, 40 are being held in pre-trial detention centers awaiting a ‘sentence’, 123 have already received a ‘sentence’ and imprisoned, 18 are without status," the report says.

The representative office noted that 33 illegally imprisoned citizens of Ukraine are from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, from where they were illegally taken to occupied Crimea. However, the exact number of displaced prisoners is unknown, because the occupation administrations mostly do not confirm that Ukrainian citizens are being held in the pre-trial detention center of the occupied peninsula.

It is noted that dozens of elderly people and those with serious health problems, who are not provided with proper medical care, remain imprisoned. Their lives are in danger, the president's representative office in Crimea stressed.