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Ukrainian filmmaker Sentsov injured again by Russian shelling

Published July 17,2023
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Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov said he has been injured again in fighting in the south of the country.

"The Bradley [tank] saved our lives again," Sentsov wrote on Facebook on Monday.

An uploaded photo showed the director, who has served as a volunteer with the Ukrainian army since the full-scale Russian war began in February 2022, with bloody shrapnel injuries to his face.

Russian artillery fire slightly injured three soldiers in his combat group.

According to Sentsov, it was his first combat deployment since returning to the front after his latest wounding on July 8. "The week did not start well," the filmmaker wrote, thanking doctors in the southern Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhya for their work.

Sentsov, a director born in Crimea, was arrested there in 2014, after Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula.

A year later, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Russia for allegedly planning terrorist attacks and other unsubstantiated charges.

Sentsov denied all the charges against him and reported torture used by the authorities to try to force a confession. Internationally, he was considered a political prisoner. In 2019, he was released as part of a prisoner exchange.

During his imprisonment, Oleh Sentsov was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.