A military chamber of Russia’s Supreme Court has upheld the six-year prison sentence passed on Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Hryb. It ignored the considerable evidence that Hryb, then just 19, was abducted from Belarus and tortured by the FSB, and the lack of any substance to the charges against him. Most worryingly, it disregarded the evident danger to Hryb’s life, given the young man’s very serious medical issues. It is only Russia that is treating this torment of a young student as a ‘trial’, and the hearing was, tellingly, attended by many western diplomats, the Ukrainian consul, as well as by some Russian activists who came to show their support for Hryb and other Ukrainian political prisoners.

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