What was on the agenda on 6 September 2018?

What was on the regional calendar on 6 September 2018? One scheduled item was a visit by Vadim Krasnoselsky, President of the unrecognized Republic of Transnistria, to Moldovan President Igor Dodon for talks. Krasnoselsky had announced the plan on 31 August 2018.

The meeting took place against a tense backdrop in the wider region.

The aftermath in Donetsk

On 31 August 2018, Olexander Zakharchenko, leader of the self-declared DNR, was killed in an explosion at a restaurant in central Donetsk. On 2 September 2018, tens of thousands of people attended his funeral. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the day before that the murder was a provocation and that it would derail the stalled Normandy format peace process.

The Normandy format brought together Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France. The group first met informally in 2014, during commemorations of the D-Day anniversary in Normandy, and played a substantial role in mediating the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015. Later, in 2022, further meetings failed to defuse rising tensions before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Pollution in Crimea

On 4 September 2018, a release of a chemical substance in Armiansk, in Crimea, caused significant environmental contamination, as reported at the time.

A day in context

The items from these days sat in different places, from Donetsk to Crimea to the Dniester region, but all of them touched on the unresolved questions of the region's conflicts and territorial disputes. The planned talks between the Transnistrian and Moldovan leaders were the one item on the calendar for 6 September itself, while the others were developments from the days just before it.