23:56, 21 July 2025

Russian Gribul goes on hunger strike after Tbilisi court hearing

Russian citizen Artem Gribul, accused in Georgia of drug trafficking, has declared a hunger strike. At the hearing of the case of Gribul and Anastasia Zinovkina, the judge did not allow him to make a statement.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, Russian citizens Artem Gribul and Anastasia Zinovkina, who participated in protests in Tbilisi, were arrested on charges of drug trafficking. In court, they stated that evidence was planted on them, and that security forces resorted to threats. At the hearing in April, during the interrogation of a police officer, Gribul held a piece of paper with the inscription: "He planted drugs in my pockets." At a hearing at the end of June, the owner of the apartment where the Russians lived told the court that the security forces were not constantly in sight during the search.

According to the security forces, packages of narcotic drugs were found in the apartment. Gribul's father had previously told the "Caucasian Knot" that the case included a video recording of the search, and the operative would appear and then disappear from the frame. "There is a moment when the operatives are recorded standing in the doorway, but the investigator disappears from the frame for four minutes. You can do anything in four minutes, plant any evidence," he said.

Today, after another court hearing, Artem Gribul went on a hunger strike in prison. The arrested man said that he was on a “full” hunger strike, according to a post on the Telegram channel of a support group for arrested Russians.

“His only demand is that the court request details of calls to the translators of Anastasia and Artem at the time when they were summoned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to participate in their detention on December 17,” the report says.

At the next hearing in the case of Zinovkina and Gribul, which took place today in the Tbilisi City Court, several prosecution witnesses testified. The judge limited the defendants’ right to ask questions, and a representative of the prosecutor’s office was outraged that the defendant was asking “too many questions” to his witness. After another question that Anastasia asked the police witness, the judge ended the hearing. “Artem Gribul was not given the opportunity to read out his statement, he was forcibly handcuffed and taken out of the courtroom,” the Tbilisi_life Telegram channel reported.

In court, Zinovkina stated that during her arrest, the interpreter did not explain her rights to her or explain to her why she was being arrested, and subsequently she was not provided with the case materials in Russian, activist Natia Chikovani, who was present at the hearing, wrote on her Facebook page*.

The next hearing in the Gribul and Zinovkina case is scheduled for July 28.

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Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/413222