The hearing of Kyivsky district court of Poltava in the case of Kharkiv City Mayor Hennadiy Kernes and his bodyguards Vitaliy Blinnyk and Yevhen Smitsky related to the attack at Euromaidan activists and their kidnapping in 2014 scheduled for August 28, 2017 was postponed for September 25.

"The meeting was postponed for September 25, as Hennadiy Kernes is undergoing treatment," the defending lawyer of the Kharkiv mayor Oleksandr Hunchenko said on Monday.

At the hearing on August 28 the court planned to study the materials of the criminal case.

As reported, unidentified individuals attacked participants in a demonstration in support of Euromaidan in Kharkiv on January 25, 2014. The same day, deputy of Kharkiv regional council Ivan Varchenko (Batkivschyna) reported the kidnapping of two Euromaidan activists – Oleksandr Kutianin and Oleksiy Riapolov "after they removed the license plates of cars near National Hotel that belonged to Kernes' friends". Later, the PR department of the Interior Ministry's main department in Kharkiv region said they did not have confirmation of the information about the abduction of the two activists.

On March 2, 2015, the Prosecutor General's Office notified Kernes of being suspected of committing crimes under Parts 2 and 3 of Article 27, Part 2 of Article 146 (illegal restriction of freedom, or abduction), Parts 2 and 3 of Article 27, Part 2 of Article 127 (torture), Parts 2 and 3 of Article 27, Part 1 of Article 129 (threat of murder) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and announced the completion of the pre-trial investigation.

On April 2, 2015, Ukraine's higher specialized court for civil and criminal cases has moved court hearings on the case of Kernes from Kharkiv's Dzerzhinsky district court to Poltava's Kyivsky district court.