Dear Oleg Gennadyevich Sentsov, you must feel very lonely, way out in the Labytnangi penal colony, the northernmost one in Russia, so far from Ukraine and from your loved ones. I am writing to you – without knowing if this letter will ever reach you – to let you know that, in thought at least, you are not alone: throughout the world a great many people – filmmakers like you, writers, journalists, activists and simple citizens – are thinking of you, supporting you, and wishing with all their hearts soon to see you free.

It has now been 82 days since you began your hunger strike. You have done so to protest against not only the injustice of your own detention, but also that of 65 of your fellow Ukrainians, imprisoned like you in jails throughout Russia on the flimsiest of charges. This gesture of yours, starving yourself to death, is one of the most violent forms of protest anyone can undertake. In your case, all the more so as you have two children waiting for you in Crimea (where you were arrested), who have been left with only their grandmother after their mother, your wife, was forced to flee to Ukraine. One can only imagine their fear, their anguish, their desperate clinging to the slightest shred of hope. Yet no matter what, your decision to embark on this hunger strike is fully justified.

The Russian authorities arrested you, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian filmmaker living in Crimea, after you and your friends protested against their illegal invasion and annexation of the peninsula in March 2014 and refused to recognise it. Together with Gennady Afanasyev, Alexei Chirnigo and Alexander Kolchenko, you were charged with utterly fabricated accusations of plotting terrorist acts in Crimea. You were beaten and threatened with rape in order to extract a confession that was used against you in court, while the Russian deputy prosecutor general bluntly refused to investigate your allegations of torture.

You were also illegally stripped of your Ukrainian citizenship by the Russian authorities, who denied you the consular protection of your native Ukrainian authorities. You were then tried as a Russian citizen, which you have never been, under the pretext that Crimea was now Russian. After a travesty of a trial during which the main witness against you, Gennady Afanasyev, retracted his confession – and claimed it had also been obtained from him under torture, using electrocution and other means – you were sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour. You were sent first to Yakutsk, in deep Siberia, and then to Labytnangi, where conditions are so harsh you have refused to accept family visits, out of fear of the black depression the experience would provoke in both your family and yourself.

The Russian regime only understands one thing: power, and the balance of power. This goes from its head, President Putin, down to the lowly FSB interrogator who coerced your confession. This is something you have fully comprehended, and for me this explains your gesture, your decision to cease feeding yourself: it is a way to alter the balance of power, to shift it in your favour and possibly turn it against your persecutors. That so many people throughout the world have now mobilised, signing petitions, and that so many political figures, beginning with President Macron of France, are now openly discussing your case, shows that you have been successful up to a point. Now we can only hope that Putin, still basking in the sham glory of the World Cup some still believe he bought, will not wish to see his moment tarnished by you, by your oh-so-noisy silent protest, by your death perhaps.

For clearly it is death you are risking, as you well know. Every day it draws closer. A few weeks ago you had a cardiac incident; you recovered, but are more fragile than ever. We can only admire your courage and your lucidity.

Eighty-two days is a long time to hunger, even with medical assistance. All of us hope your nightmare will soon end, and the regime that has so arbitrarily imprisoned you will relent and let you go. Confronted during the World Cup final with repeated calls for your liberation, Putin reportedly stated: “I will think about it.” You know better than I do precisely what he needs to think about: what will cost him more, the loss of face internally if he lets you go, or the international outcry if he lets you die? Your only hope is that the latter will outweigh the former, which is why every statement, every publication such as this, counts for something, word by word, drop by drop.

All I can tell you, as we wait for your freedom, is this: your struggle is not in vain. Your protests against the illegal annexation of your homeland, against Russia’s flagrant violation of international law, against its regime’s obscene violence and repression, and its flood of lies, propaganda and disinformation, hold a great deal of meaning. This holds true far beyond the Arctic Circle where you languish behind bars; far beyond even Moscow and St Petersburg where so many naive tourists, coming from Britain and from all over the world for football and cheap beer, partied for weeks without even knowing your name.

It is not just for your friends, for Ukraine and the Ukrainians that you are struggling, but for these strangers too, for their right to live in a world free of Russian aggression and manipulations. Many of us understand this clearly, and in whatever feeble manner we can, we are at your side.

Respectfully and fraternally,

Jonathan Littell

• Jonathan Littell is a French-American journalist and author of Syrian Notebooks: Inside the Homs Uprising