Kherson municipal court has made a decision in the case of two servicemen of the Russian Border Service, a branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB), who were arrested on June 30, 2017 on the administrative border with Crimea. The court ruling was published in the state registry website on December 13th.
The judge has granted the request by the Office of Investigations of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and extended the detention of the Russian servicemen, Lieutenant Askar Kulub and Senior Warrant Officer Vladimir Kuznetsov until February 4, 2018. This is confirmed by the registry entries н/п 1-кс/766/12493/17 http://www.reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/70842090 and н/п 1-кс/766/12491/17. http://www.reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/70842970
The timeline of the detention of the Russian FSB servicemen is available here.
At this time, it is unknown whether these Russian servicemen could be exchanged for Ukrainian citizens kidnapped or prosecuted under falsified charges by the Russian Federation.
The Youngest Prisoner of Kremlin
As we have informed earlier, the son of a Ukrainian officer 19 year old Pavlo Hryb went missing in Belarus on August 24th. Nothing was known about his location for over 2 weeks. Later, it was discovered that he was being held in a pretrial detention facility of the city of Krasnodar under terrorism charges. In the meantime, Russian officials did not allow Ukrainian consuls or lawyers to visit the prisoner.
On December 15th, the district court of Krasnodar (Russia) held another hearing and extended the pretrial arrest for Pavlo Hryb until March 4.
In the meantime, Hryb’s sister has addressed the Council of Europe in an open letter, where she states that Russia has gravely violated Hryb’s basic rights, protected by the Convention on Human Rights.
“For more than 110 days my brother is kept in illegal detention in SIZO (preliminary detention facility) No. 5 of the city of Krasnodar in the Russian Federation.
He is the youngest Ukrainian prisoner of the Kremlin, Oleg Sentsov, Olexandr Kolchenko, Roman Sushchenko and many others among them.
Every day his fundamental rights protected by the Convention are brutally violated. Pavlo is not allowed to take medications that are vital to his health, forbidden to communicate in his own language and to see his family.
His only fault was that through social networks he openly condemned the annexation of Crimea and the war started by Russia in eastern Ukraine.
Do we want to live in a world where Russian special services hunt for teens and apply Stalinist terror practices to them?
Are we going to turn blind eye to the fact that representatives of the whole nation are being persecuted because of ethnic origin, as is the case with the Crimean Tatars in occupied Crimea?
Are we going to agree that authoritarian regimes use people as hostages in geopolitical games?
Are we really ready to exchange values for economic interests?” – wrote Olha Hryb in her address to the Council of Europe.
You can read the full text of Olha Hryb’s letter here.
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