Honcharuk's offered resignation and a downed airliner: 20 January 2020
A look back at two stories from the days before 20 January 2020: a prime minister's resignation offer in Kyiv and anger over Flight 752 in Iran.
What did Ukraine's political class face on 20 January 2020? Two separate stories, both reaching a point of tension in the preceding days, pulled attention towards the government in Kyiv and towards Tehran.
On 17 January 2020, Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk submitted his resignation. It followed the leak earlier that week of an audio clip in which he allegedly criticised President Volodymyr Zelensky's economic policies. Zelensky subsequently announced that Honcharuk could keep his position. The episode left an open question about how far the prime minister and the president were aligned on economic policy, though the reported outcome was that the government stayed in place.
The same day, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a Friday sermon, his first in eight years. He defended the Revolutionary Guards over the accidental killing of passengers on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 and praised Operation Martyr Soleimani for delivering what he called a slap on the face to the United States. His sermon came as public anger mounted against the Iranian government over its handling of the crash.
The aircraft had been shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on 8 January 2020. Protests followed, forming part of the unrest that swept Iran in January 2020.
Why the two stories belong together
They are different in kind, yet both turned on how a government accounts for itself. In Kyiv, a leaked recording prompted an offer to resign that the president declined to accept. In Iran, the leadership's public defence of the Guards met rising popular anger rather than calming it.
For Ukraine, the airliner carried the national carrier's name, which made the Iranian response a matter of concern beyond Iran's borders, while the Honcharuk affair was a test of cohesion at home.
