Vasyl Ovsienko

Vasyl Vasyliovych Ovsienko (; 8 April 1949 – 19 June 2023) was a Ukrainian writer, human rights activist, and Soviet dissident who worked as a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group and founded the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.

Early life and career Vasyl Vasyliovych Ovsienko was born into a peasant family on 8 April 1949 in the village of Lenino (now ) in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union. He was the ninth and youngest surviving child in his family. His father had received two years of education, while his mother had received no formal education and was illiterate. His maternal family was descended from members of the Polish szlachta. At an early age, Ovsienko became captivated by literature, writing poetry. Some of his works were published in the local Star of Polesia newspaper. Ovsienko spent his second sentence in prisons in Ukraine's Zhytomyr and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. While imprisoned, he joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group in 1978. He was placed in the Perm-36 labour colony, with unsanitary and crowded conditions.

As part of the Perestroika reforms promoted by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Ovsienko, along with all other political prisoners in Perm-36, was moved to the Perm-35 prison on 8 December 1987. Ovsienko was urged to write a statement providing grounds for a pardon, but refused (along with several other political prisoners) out of the belief that he had been wrongfully convicted. He was pardoned a year later in spite of his refusal to write a statement, being among the final five to be released (alongside Mykola Horbal, Ivan Kandyba, M. Alekseyev, and Enn Tarto).

Ovsienko died on 19 July 2023.