Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include reactions to Pavlo Gryb’s verdict and comments from his father.
Russia has sentenced Pavlo Gryb, a critically ill Ukrainian political prisoner, to six years behind bars for encouraging an acquaintance to commit a terrorist attack.
No attack was ever carried out, and rights activists have cast doubt on the legitimacy of the charges and criticized Gryb’s treatment in pre-trial detention.
On March 21, during legal debates in Gryb’s case one day before the verdict, the prosecution requested that Gryb be sentenced to six years in prison.
During that court session, 20-year-old Gryb also gave his final statement in the case. During his brief address before the court, Gryb said he did not recognize the charges against him, terming his accusers, Russia’s Federal Security Service, “bandits and murders.”
“I wish all Ukrainian patriots the inspiration and strength to pass through the trail of captivity with dignity,” he said, according to a video published by the Hromadske television channel. “To pass through it with dignity in accordance with the truth and their conscience.”
Gryb’s final words were: “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the nation, glory to the Ukrainian nation.”
On March 22, after the judge read the verdict, Gryb announced that he would launch a hunger strike in response to being denied access both to doctors and Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman.
In response, Vasyl Prytula, Gryb’s Ukrainian doctor, requested that anyone in contact with his patient convince him not to go on hunger strike.
“There is still a chance to get out of prison, there is hope in God and in people around the world!!!” he wrote in a comment on father Ihor Gryb’s Facebook page. “For Pavlo, a hunger strike is suicide, it’s definitely death!!!”
Next steps
Gryb’s family and lawyers plan to fight the verdict within the Russian legal system and to appeal to the European Court of Human Right. However, time is not on their side, according to Ihor Gryb.
Before he was kidnapped, Pavlo was preparing to have an operation on his heart. He has needed that operation for over two years, Ihor told the Kyiv Post by phone.
That operation would not have cured his illness, but would have extended Pavlo’s life provided he continued taking his medications, followed a strict diet, and lived in normal conditions.
“All Pavlo’s life he has followed a strict diet. At home we have never even used a frying pan,” Ihor said. “Only steamed food, without pepper, not spicy, all dietetic food.”
Given that Pavlo has received neither medical care, nor the necessary operation in custody, his prospects don’t look good.
“If Pavlo stays behind bars, he will simply die,” the elder Gryb said.
Ukrainian officials were quick to condemn Pavlo Gryb’s sentence, and they promised to continue fighting for his release.
“I call on the international community to increase pressure on the aggressor state, the Russian Federation, in connection with the violation of Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Gryb’s right to life and a fair trial,” Liudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, wrote on Facebook.
Gryb will now be transferred to a new prison. Due to health conditions Gryb has acquired in custody, the prison transfer and further imprisonment “pose a threat to the life of this illegally convicted Ukrainian,” Denisova wrote.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin criticized the verdict and called Gryb “a true hero.”
“Instead of an urgent operation that Pavlo needs…he got six years in this idiotic verdict,” he said in a video message. “I call on everyone and will work with all our friends so that this message of support (for Gryb) will be the first issue in all contacts with Russia right now.”
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt also condemned Gryb’s verdict.
“Russia’s continued use of politically motivated detentions is appalling…. I echo (Pavlo Klimkin) & call for his immediate release,” he wrote on Twitter.
Illegal kidnapping
In August 2017, Pavlo Gryb traveled from the Ukrainian border city of Chernihiv to Gomel, Belarus to meet with Tatiana Yershova, a teenager from Sochi, Russia whom he had met on the Russian social network VKontakte.
After his brief meeting with Yershova, Gryb was kidnapped by plainclothes security officers, handcuffed, and placed in a van. Later, he was handed over to another group of people, who took Gryb to a police station in Russia’s Smolensk region, where they “formalized his status in accordance with the Russian criminal code,” a lawyer for Gryb told Hromadske in September 2017. Russian security agents claim to have arrested Gryb in Yartsevo, a city in Russia’s Smolensk Oblast.
During a January court hearing, Gryb alleged that, after his kidnapping, security agents had beaten and tortured him in order to extract a “formal confession.”
The Russian prosecution accuses Gryb of instructing Yershova in messages and Skype conversations to make an explosive device and detonate it at her school during an assembly. However, during a November 2018 court hearing, Yershova’s closests friend — a witness for the prosecution — told the court that the pair’s conversations were romantic in nature and not political.
Chronic illness
Gryb suffers from portal hypertension, a chronic illness that affects the function of his organs. He has not received necessary medical treatment behind bars.
In December, Gryb’s father Ihor said that his son was suffering from the cirrhosis of the liver and had lost his sight in one eye and had only 15-20 percent vision in the other due to inadequate medical treatment.
In January, Gryb’s mother managed to convince the court to have him examined at the Rostov Oblast Clinical Diagnostic Center. The results offered a grim prognosis for the political prisoner.
“When he was seen by a neurologist yesterday, the neurologist said that he has symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease,” Ihor Gryb told Nastoyashee Vremya on Jan. 30. “My wife said that the doctor was shocked by the condition of his health.”
