ROSTOV-ON-DON. March 22 (Interfax) - Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Hryb, whom a Russian court on Friday sentenced to six years in prison for instigating a female high school student to commit a terrorist attack in Sochi, has declared a hunger strike, lawyer Marina Dubrovina told journalists in Rostov-on-Don.
"He disagrees with the fact that he hasn't been provided with aid, and that doctors from Ukraine haven't been admitted to him. He has said officially that he has declared a hunger strike. He will only be drinking for the time being, as this is essential," Dubrovina said.
It had been reported earlier on Friday that the North Caucasus Military District Court sentenced Hryb to six years in a general security penitentiary.
Pavlo Hryb had been detained while visiting Belarus on August 24, 2017. He was 19 at the time. It emerged later that he was held at a pretrial detention facility in Russia's Krasnodar.
According to the case files, Pavlo Hryb, while in Ukraine, exchanged online messages with a female high school student from Sochi from March to May 2017 to persuade her to plant a previously manufactured improvised explosive device and set it off at a prom on June 30, 2017. He recommended that she leave Russia after committing the attack.