Novi Sanzhary protest and Idlib strikes: two crises in February 2020

What did the days around 26 February 2020 show about how states handle pressure on their own ground? Two reports from 20 February 2020 offer a contrast, one domestic and one far from Kyiv.

In Novi Sanzhary, protests were held against the arrival of people evacuated from China. Buses were damaged, and 10 people were injured. The episode showed how quickly public anxiety could turn into physical confrontation when a state moved people from one place to another.

The same day, in northwestern Syria, Turkish-backed rebels launched an offensive in 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. Several tanks and armoured personnel carriers were destroyed near the village of Nayrab.

Turkey then 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 the contrast shows

The scale of the two events is very different, yet both turned on security and on trust in decisions taken by authorities. In Novi Sanzhary, the damage was to vehicles and to the wellbeing of ten people. In Idlib, it was measured in soldiers killed and in a request for allied air defence.

For Ukraine's public institutions, the Novi Sanzhary violence was a domestic test of how arrangements for evacuees were communicated and received locally. For readers following the wider region, the Turkish request showed a government turning to a NATO partner when its forces came under air attack.