23 July: Pavlo Hryb. Source: Iryna Romaliiska, Hromadske Radio. On 23 July, the Russian authorities began the trial of Pavlo Hryb, a 19-year-old Ukrainian citizen who was abducted from Belarus by Russian security services. After 11 months of psychological pressure, Hryb, now 20, is facing trial on fabricated terrorism charges in one of the most absurd cases among the roughly 70 Ukrainian citizens who have been illegally detained in Russia and annexed Crimea.
In late August 2017, Pavlo Hryb travelled to Gomel, Belarus, to meet a 17-year old girl by the name of Tanya. This was supposed to be their first real date after months of chatting online: he was from Ukraine, and she was from Russia. Immediately after the date, Pavlo went missing. As Hryb walked to the bus station in order to travel back to Kyiv, unidentified people bundled Hryb into a dark minivan and took him across the border into Russian territory, where he was formally charged with terrorism offences. Allegedly, he had incited a person (in this case, Tanya) to terrorist activity.
“The Russian border service says that Pavlo didn’t cross the border. But he was arrested in Smolensk Oblast. How could this happen? The fact that he wasn’t charged with illegal border crossing means that he was transported by law-enforcement agencies,” says Marina Dubrovina, Hryb’s attorney.
