The European Union has once again called on the Russian Federation to immediately release the illegally sentenced Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Hryb.
"EU deeply concerned about sentencing of Pavel Hryb by #Russia military court to 6 years without substantiated charges & expects to be immediately released & granted access to special medical treatment he needs. Ukraine doctors must be allowed to see him as required from ECfHR," the EU Delegation to the OSCE wrote on Twitter.
In a separate tweet, EU diplomats recalled that over 70 political prisoners are illegally detained in Crimea and Russia, including Oleg Sentsov, EdemBekirov, Oleksandr Kolchenko, Volodymyr Balukh, and Emir-Usein Kuku. "EU calls for their immediate release!" the tweet reads.
As UNIAN reported, Russia's North-Caucasian District Military Court on March 22 sentenced Pavlo Hryb to six years in a penal colony for allegedly "promoting terrorism."
After the sentence was announced, Hryb said he would go on hunger strike. He demanded that doctors and Ukrainian human rights commissioner Liudmyla Denisova be allowed to visit him.
Read alsoPavlo Hryb might not survive prison term – father
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin called on the international community to exert pressure on the Russian Federation to release Hryb.
Pavlo Hryb was tried in Russia on trumped-up "terrorist" charges as investigators claim he instructed an accomplice to set off an explosive device at a Russian schoolyard.
He was just 19 when he was abducted by the FSB from Belarus on August 24, 2017, after going there to meet who he thought was a young woman he had chatted with online, and fallen in love with.
Hryb is diagnosed with portal hypertension, which requires daily intake of necessary medications and a special diet, the lack of which could become fatal.
