The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is protesting due to the trial in the case of Ukrainian Pavlo Hryb and demanding that Russia free him.

"We express a protest to Russia due to the trial in the Hryb case. A trumped-up case, illegal charges. We are demanding the release," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariana Betsa wrote on Twitter.

Earlier on Tuesday, it was reported that the North Caucasus District Military Court had received a criminal case against Hryb, who is accused of a crime envisaged by Part 1, Article 205.1 (assistance in terrorist activities) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Preliminary hearings in the case are scheduled for July 9, and the court session will be held behind closed doors.

According to the materials of the criminal case, from March to May 2017, the defendant, while in Ukraine, corresponded on the Internet with a schoolgirl from Sochi, a high school student. Hryb, according to the investigation, urged the girl to plant an improvised explosive device and activate it at a graduation party on June 30, 2017. After the terrorist attack, the defendant recommended that the schoolgirl leave Russia.

"In accordance with Part 3, Article 12 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, a foreign citizen who committed a crime outside the Russian Federation but directed against the interests of the Russian Federation is subject to criminal liability," a court spokesperson said.

Hryb's father, Ihor Hryb, referring to lawyer Marina Dubrovina, said that Pavlo looks "very exhausted and depressed" and cannot get either medicines or food, because three months ago the Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service forbade making money transfers.

As reported, ex-Ukrainian State Border Guard Service official Ihor Hryb said on August 28, 2017, that Russian special services had abducted his 19-year-old son Pavlo during a visit to Gomel, Belarus, where he went on August 24 to meet a girl whom he had met and talked to only on social-networking sites.

It was reported on September 7, 2017, that Hryb was in a detention facility in Krasnodar, Russia.