Kharkiv mayor Hennadiy Kernes has said he expected to be acquitted after a judicial hearing of the case of the abduction of two activists of EuroMaidan in 2014.

"I was waiting for an acquittal," he told journalists after the decision of the Kyivsky district court of Poltava to close the case.

"I understood this decision in such a way that the proceedings were terminated due to the fact that prosecutors did not systematically attend the courtroom at the appointed time and the judge regarded this as a systematic failure to appear," Kernes said.