What the Chornobyl zone fires and a wartime budget asked of Kyiv
A look back at mid-April 2020, when wildfires in the exclusion zone were put out and parliament reworked the state budget for the pandemic.
What did Ukraine's public institutions have to deal with on 17 April 2020? Two pressures stood out in the days just before it: a fire in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the cost of fighting COVID-19.
Fire in the zone
On 11 April 2020, a village near the mostly abandoned town of Poliske was evacuated as forest fires continued to spread inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. By 13 April, the wildfires had reached the abandoned city of Pripyat, 2 km (1.2 mi) from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
On 14 April, officials of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine announced that all open fires in the zone had been extinguished. The blaze, described as the largest in the zone, had lasted ten days and burned 3,500 hectares of land. By 17 April, then, the emergency response had been declared a success, though the fires left a record of the zone's vulnerability.
The zone itself was established shortly after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Later accounts add that at least one suspect was arrested for alleged arson in connection with the fires.
A budget for the pandemic
On 13 April, the Verkhovna Rada approved changes to the 2020 state budget needed to fight COVID-19. The amendments tripled the budget deficit. It was a plain statement of priorities: the state would borrow far more in order to pay for its response to the disease.
Taken together, the two stories showed institutions working under strain. The emergency service dealt with a fire that came close to Pripyat, while parliament reshaped public finances within days of that same fire's peak.
Elsewhere
On 15 April, according to United States Space Command, Russia conducted a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile test, a reminder that Ukraine's domestic emergencies unfolded against an international backdrop.
