Budget changes and zone fires: Ukraine's 13 April 2020
A look back at a day when parliament reworked the state budget for the pandemic while wildfires advanced inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
What did Ukraine's institutions face on 13 April 2020? Two pressures arrived together: a public health emergency that demanded money, and a forest fire that moved closer to one of the country's best-known sites.
A budget rewritten for COVID-19
On 13 April 2020, the Verkhovna Rada adopted amendments to the 2020 state budget needed to fight the coronavirus disease COVID-19. As reported at the time, the changes raised the budget deficit threefold. The amendments were framed as a response to the pandemic, and the deficit increase was the most striking feature of the package.
Fire reaches Pripyat
The same day, wildfires in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone reached the abandoned city of Pripyat, 2 km (1.2 miles) from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Two days earlier, on 11 April 2020, a village near the mostly abandoned town of Poliske had been evacuated as forest fires continued to spread inside the zone.
The zone, also known as the 30-Kilometre Zone, was established shortly after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. By 13 April 2020 the fires had already forced one evacuation and were now burning near the city and the plant.
What followed
The fires, which began in April 2020, were later largely extinguished within about two weeks. At least one suspect was also arrested for alleged arson. None of that was known on 13 April 2020.
A day of overlapping demands
Looking back, 13 April 2020 shows how a government can be pulled in two directions at once. Lawmakers were reshaping public finances around a health crisis, while the fire spread through the exclusion zone and reached Pripyat.
