Sushchenko hands over letter to Macron

Ukrinform journalist Roman Sushchenko, a former political prisoner of the Kremlin, has met with French Ambassador to Ukraine Etienne de Poncins and handed over a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron thanking him for active participation in his fate.
"Honorable Mr. President! Let me show my high respect and express my sincere gratitude for your personal involvement and one of the decisive roles in my fate. You, as the leader of the nation, the head of the French state, as a person who defends family and democratic values, has returned the father to the children, the husband to the wife, the son to the mother," the letter reads.

Sushchenko thanked the French president for the opportunity "to breathe the fresh air of freedom, to meet the dawn in my native Ukraine, to do my favorite business" and to fight for the release of other political hostages.

The journalist's son, Maksym, also handed over a letter to Macron in which he thanks him for the return of his father.

Sushchenko presented a reproduction of one of his works created in a Russian prison - a drawing of the French city of Saint-Malo - to the French Embassy in Ukraine.

Ukrinform's foreign correspondent in France, Sushchenko, was illegally imprisoned in Russia on trumped-up charges for three years. He was detained on September 30, 2016 in Moscow, where he arrived on a private trip.

On October 7, 2016, he was charged with espionage. On June 4, 2018, the Moscow City Court sentenced Sushchenko to 12 years in prison in a high-security penal colony. On September 12, the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the ruling.

On September 7, 2019, Ukraine and Russia exchanged detainees in the 35 for 35 format. Thirty-five Ukrainians, including Sushchenko, ten other political prisoners and 24 sailors captured in the Kerch Strait in November 2018, returned home.