What happened on 5 October 2018: Sentsov, boxing in Kyiv, S-400
A retrospective on a day that combined a prisoner's hunger strike, a boxing congress in Kyiv and an arms deal with sanctions implications.
What did the news look like on 5 October 2018? Three separate stories stood out: the end of a long hunger strike, a large sporting gathering in Kyiv and a Russian weapons sale that raised the prospect of American sanctions.
Oleg Sentsov ended his hunger strike on that date, after 145 days.
In Kyiv, the 56th Congress of the World Boxing Council (WBC) took place. It drew more than 600 participants from 164 countries, along with numerous stars of the sport.
The third story concerned the Russian defence industry. India was buying the S-400 missile system, a deal that potentially exposed it to U.S. sanctions under CAATSA.
The sanctions law behind the S-400 story
CAATSA is the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, a U.S. federal law that imposed sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia. It works by preventing U.S. companies from doing business with sanctioned entities. The Senate passed the bill on 27 July 2017 by 98 votes to 2, after the House had approved it by 419 to 3. President Donald Trump signed it into law on 2 August 2017, though he believed the legislation was seriously flawed.
