Novi Sanzhary protest and Idlib clashes: two crises, one February
A look back at events reported in the days before 25 February 2020, from a protest in a Ukrainian town to a military escalation on Turkey's border.
What did the reports gathered around 25 February 2020 show about the pressures facing governments? Two separate stories, one domestic and one far abroad, stand out from the preceding days.
In Ukraine, protests in Novi Sanzhary against the arrival of people evacuated from China ended on 20 February 2020 with damaged buses and ten people injured. The episode involved evacuees and a local community, and it showed how quickly public anxiety could turn into physical confrontation.
The same date brought a very different escalation in northwestern Syria. Turkish-backed rebels launched an offensive in the Idlib Governorate against government forces. A Russian air strike killed two Turkish soldiers and injured five others. Turkey said its retaliatory strike killed 50 Syrian troops, and several tanks and armoured personnel carriers were destroyed near the village of Nayrab.
Also on 20 February 2020, Turkey formally asked its NATO ally, the United States, to deploy Patriot surface-to-air missile systems on the Syria–Turkey border. The aim was to deter Syrian and Russian air strikes on Turkish troops.
What links them
The stories are not connected in cause. Yet both show authorities having to respond fast to a sudden shock. In Novi Sanzhary, the immediate result was damage and injuries. On the Syrian border, Ankara turned to an alliance partner for air defence.
For readers in Kyiv, the lesson from the first episode is local: public reaction to an arrival of evacuees was as much part of the story as the arrival itself.
