What did Kyiv ask of the world in April 2018?
Two appeals made on 19 April 2018, one on a Donbas mine and one on church autocephaly, show Ukraine seeking outside backing.
What was Ukraine asking of outside actors in the days before 24 April 2018? Two reports from 19 April 2018 point to appeals on very different subjects, both directed beyond the country's borders.
The first concerned the war in Donbass. Ecology minister Ostap Semerak warned of a major nuclear disaster if pro-Russia separatists went ahead with a plan to flood a mine where a small nuclear weapon had been tested in the 1970s. He appealed for international assistance to prevent the flooding.
The second was a matter of church and state. On the same day, the Verkhovna Rada backed an appeal by the President to Archbishop Bartholomew of Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch, asking him to grant a Tomos on the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
What the two have in common
Both were requests addressed to an external audience: one to the international community over a security risk in the war zone, the other to the Ecumenical Patriarch on an ecclesiastical question. In the second case, the parliamentary vote gave the presidential request legislative support.
The reports from that date do not say how either appeal would be answered, so the outcomes remain separate questions from the requests themselves.
