Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Hryb, who declared a hunger strike following a sentence in Russia to six years in a penal colony, has been put in a separate cell.
"On Monday, Hryb submitted an official letter regarding a hunger strike. He will be examined by a doctor and put in a separate cell," said Leonid Petrashis, the head of the Public Monitoring Commission in Rostov region.
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According to him, members of the Public Monitoring Commission warned Hryb that due to the hunger strike, he would not be able to get gastritis medication prescribed to him, and this might have a negative effect on his health.
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.
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.