What did Kyiv ask of the world on 19 April 2018?
A look back at a day when Ukraine's ecology minister warned of a nuclear risk in Donbas and parliament backed a request for a church Tomos.
What did Ukraine's leaders want from the outside world on 19 April 2018? On that date, two separate appeals went out, one about the safety of occupied territory and the other about the status of the Orthodox church in Ukraine.
The first came from ecology minister Ostap Semerak, who warned of a major nuclear disaster in the war in Donbass. His concern was a plan by pro-Russia separatists to flood a mine where a small nuclear weapon had been tested in the 1970s. Semerak appealed for international assistance to prevent the flooding.
The second came from the Verkhovna Rada. On the same day, parliament supported the President's appeal to Archbishop Bartholomew of Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch, asking him to grant a Tomos on autocephaly for the Orthodox church in Ukraine.
Both moves were requests addressed beyond Ukraine's borders: one to international partners over a hazard in the conflict zone, the other to the Ecumenical Patriarch over the church's status.
A grim backdrop
Two days earlier, on 17 April 2018, a road accident in Kryvyi Rih involving a car, a minibus and a bus had killed 9 people and injured 21 more.
