What did Kyiv press for in the days before 23 April 2018?
A look back at two appeals made on 19 April 2018, one to international partners over a Donbas mine and one to Constantinople over church autocephaly.
What was occupying Ukraine's political agenda in the days leading up to 23 April 2018? Two reported events from 19 April 2018 point to appeals directed outside the country's borders.
The first concerned security and the environment in Donbass. Ukrainian 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 was tested in the 1970s. He appealed for international assistance to prevent the flooding. The warning placed a local conflict issue before foreign partners as a matter of wider safety.
The second was institutional and religious. The Verkhovna Rada supported an appeal from the President to Archbishop of Constantinople, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, asking him to issue a Tomos on autocephaly for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The vote showed parliamentary backing for the request.
The two items are unrelated in subject. Both, however, show Ukrainian officials turning to outside bodies: one to international helpers over a hazard in the conflict zone, the other to a religious authority in Constantinople on the status of a church.
