Flight 752 and TurkStream: what 8 January 2020 meant for Kyiv
A retrospective on the day a Ukrainian airliner crashed near Tehran and a major gas pipeline was inaugurated.
What did Ukraine lose on 8 January 2020, and what else was happening around its energy and security interests that same day? The answer begins with a tragedy near Tehran.
On 8 January 2020, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Ukraine International Airlines crashed while taking off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport. All 176 people on board were killed. The flight was a scheduled service from Tehran to Kyiv. As reported at the time, the crash happened amid the 2019–20 Persian Gulf crisis and was under investigation.
It was later established that the aircraft had been shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shortly after takeoff. That was not known on 8 January 2020 itself, when the cause remained a matter for investigators.
A second event, a different story
The same day, the heads of state of Turkey, Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria formally inaugurated the TurkStream gas pipelines. The two events were unrelated, but both were reported on 8 January 2020 and both touched Ukraine's wider neighbourhood: one through the loss of a Ukrainian airline's flight and everyone aboard, the other through a new gas route involving Russia, Turkey and two Balkan states.
Why the day is remembered
For Ukraine, the crash was the defining event of 8 January 2020. A national airline had lost an aircraft with 176 lives, and the circumstances were at that point unexplained. The pipeline ceremony, by contrast, was a formal inauguration attended by leaders.
Looking back, the contrast is stark: a day of official ceremony in one part of the region, and a day of loss and unanswered questions for Ukraine in another.
