What did Kyiv's first week of April 2018 reveal?
A look back at the days before 9 April 2018, when Ukraine's politics mixed security reform, anti-corruption scrutiny and sanctions pressure on Russia.
What was Ukraine's public agenda on the eve of 9 April 2018? The reports from the days just before that date point to three threads: the future of the war in Donbas, the transparency rules facing public figures, and mounting international pressure on Russia.
A change of name for the war effort
On 5 April 2018, President Petro Poroshenko held a press conference in Vinnytsia and announced that the anti-terror operation in Donbass would end in May and be replaced by a military force. The operation had been declared in 2014, as armed militias arrived and unrest escalated, and it marked the start of the war in Donbas. As the background explains, the term "ATO zone" was used by the media, the government and foreign institutions alike for the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under the control of Russian forces and pro-Russian separatists. The announcement therefore concerned the formal framework for the conflict, not only a label.
Declarations and the activists
On 3 April 2018, the Verkhovna Rada rejected two bills, the presidential bill No. 6674 and the deputies' bill No. 6271. Both proposed to abolish e-declaration for civic activists. Parliament's refusal to pass either measure left the requirement in place.
Security and everyday business
On 4 April 2018, authorities announced the arrest of a suspected terrorist in connection with a 2017 attack in Kyiv that killed two people and wounded three, among them MP Ihor Mosiychuk. The same day, Ukraine and Turkey signed an agreement to improve aviation co-operation.
Pressure on Moscow
On 6 April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on twelve Russian-owned companies, a Russian arms exporter and a bank. Washington cited several reasons, including Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and military engagements in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria. The measures came under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, a US federal law that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia. It was signed into law on 2 August 2017.
Elsewhere in the region, on 3 April 2018, Russian MPs called for sanctions against Latvia in response to plans to make Latvian mandatory for all secondary-school students. A quarter of the country's population is ethnic Russian. On 8 April 2018, a bus collided with a train near Armyansk in Crimea, killing five people and injuring four.
The picture on 9 April 2018
Taken together, the reports show a country at once redefining its military posture, defending a transparency rule against attempts to narrow it, and watching Western capitals tighten the pressure on Russia. The Rada's vote on e-declaration and the announced end of the anti-terror operation were the two decisions closest to Ukraine's own institutions.
