MOSCOW, June 20. /TASS/. The Kremlin has no information about any health problems of Oleg Sentsov, a film director convicted for terrorism, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. According to him, a delay in the Russian and Ukrainian human rights ombudspersons’ visits to convicts comes from the need to solve logistics issues.

Peskov said that the Kremlin did not have "full information about the logistics" and ways to arrange such visits. The spokesman added that the two countries were verifying convict lists following a telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Pyotr Poroshenko.

"As far as we know, the ombudspersons are discussing whom they are going to visit," Peskov said. "These discussions lead to delays, besides, there have been some transport issues as the Ukrainian ombudsperson’s flight was delayed due to weather conditions. This is a rather complicated process but work is underway," the Kremlin spokesman stressed.

Peskov did not give an exact answer when asked why Ukrainian Parliament’s Human Rights Ombudsperson Lyudmila Denisova had been denied a video link with Sentsov. "You should request information from the Federal Penitentiary Service, and [Russian Human Rights Ombudsperson Tatyana] Moskalkova also must know the reasons why it happened. After all, he is a convict and it is impossible to establish video links with every convict," the Russian presidential spokesman said.

"I did not receive any information that he (Sentsov) was having any health issues but I am not supposed to have this kind of information so I cannot tell you anything on the matter," Peskov said in response to a question about Sentsov’s condition.

Sentsov case

On August 25, 2015, Russia’s North Caucasus District Military Court sentenced Oleg Sentsov to 20 years in prison on charges of establishing a terrorist group in Crimea. In the spring of 2014, the group’s members carried two terrorist attacks in the Crimean city of Simferopol, setting on fire the offices of Crimea’s Russian Community organization and the United Russia party’s Crimean branch.

Ombudspersons’ activities

On June 9, Putin and Poroshenko in a telephone call made an agreement that the two countries’ human rights ombudspersons would visit Russian convicts in Ukraine and Ukrainian convicts in Russia. On June 18, Moskalkova and Denisova held a meeting in Moscow, discussing a memorandum on visiting convicts.