Belarus still 'silent' about circumstances of Hryb's disappearance - Foreign Ministry

Head of the Consular Support Unit of the Consular Service Department of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Vasyl Kyrylych said this at a press conference at Ukrinform on Wednesday, October 18, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The Belarusian side has not provided any official information about the possible detention of Pavlo Hryb on Belarusian territory. In this regard, the Ukrainian Embassy in Belarus at the end of September reiterated its request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus to provide information on the circumstances of the possible detention of Pavlo Hryb on Belarusian territory," Kyrylych said.

He added that there was currently no relevant information from the Belarusian side.

The father of the Ukrainian illegally held in Russia, Ihor Hryb, in turn, said that he had recently received answers to his appeals to the Russian president and the FSB office in the Krasnodar Territory regarding the circumstances of his son's detention.

"These two answers had almost identical text, which states that Pavlo Hryb was detained on the territory of the Russian Federation and that he was presented with respective charges there. That is, once again I want to emphasize that this is a lie," he said.

He said that representatives of the competent authorities in Belarus had told him in an informal atmosphere that Pavlo was detained in the city of Gomel by a group of unidentified persons, taken to Russian territory and transferred to another group of people, who then took the boy to the Smolensk region, where Pavlo was kept in a certain room and only there a protocol on his detention was drawn up.

Hryb said that he had filed official requests to the Belarusian side about the circumstances of the disappearance of his son.

"I received reports that relevant investigative actions are being carried out to clarify [the circumstances of the disappearance]. No more specific information is available. What I said is unofficial information," he said.

As reported, 19-year-old Pavlo Hryb disappeared in Belarus on August 24. Later it turned out that he was in Krasnodar's detention facility No. 5 on charges of "terrorism."

On October 18, a court in Krasnodar extended the arrest of the Ukrainian kidnapped in Belarus until January 4, 2018.

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