What did 27 March 2018 show about Ukraine's politics and its neighbours?
A look back at a day when Russian diplomats were expelled abroad and Kyiv was still absorbing the arrest of an MP in parliament.
What was the mood in Kyiv on 27 March 2018? The news that day came largely from abroad, but it unfolded against a domestic story that had broken only days earlier.
On 27 March 2018, NATO and the government of Australia expelled Russian diplomats, as reactions continued to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The measures were part of a wider response to that case.
A parliament still digesting an arrest
Five days earlier, on 22 March 2018, the Verkhovna Rada had consented to lifting the parliamentary immunity of MP Nadiya Savchenko and to her detention and arrest. Investigators of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) then detained her inside the parliament building. As reported at the time, the case concerned an alleged plot to attack parliament and overthrow the government.
The sequence, a vote in the chamber followed by detention on the premises, placed questions about immunity, security services and legislative oversight at the centre of public debate.
An economic footnote
The same day, 22 March, Ukraine's State Statistics Service reported that the country's GDP had grown by 2.5% in 2017. It was a modest marker against a politically crowded week.
Neighbours with their own disputes
The regional picture also included Poland. On 21 March 2018, Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz accused the European Union of double standards and of suffering a deficit of democracy, as Warsaw and the European Commission argued over migrant quotas and proposed changes to Poland's judiciary. On 22 March, the ruling Law and Justice party proposed amendments to its planned judicial reforms in response to EU criticism that the plans threatened judicial independence. The European Commission was threatening Poland with sanctions over the reforms.
Polish and US authorities also said that day that completion of the US missile defence complex in Poland, part of a NATO project, would be delayed until 2020.
Why the day is worth revisiting
Taken together, these reports show a region where security, the rule of law and relations with Western institutions were all under scrutiny at once. For Ukraine, the Savchenko case and the modest growth figure were the domestic markers; the diplomatic expulsions and Poland's disputes with Brussels set the wider context.
