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Three pressure points on the eve of 24 February 2020
Summary
A look at what the reports from the days before 24 February 2020 showed: unrest in Ukraine, fighting in Idlib and a new US sanctions step.
What was the picture in the days leading up to 24 February 2020? The reports available from 18 to 20 February point to three separate pressure points, one in Ukraine and two involving Russia and its dealings abroad.
Unrest in Novi Sanzhary
On 20 February 2020, protests in Novi Sanzhary against the arrival of people evacuated from China damaged buses and left 10 people injured. The reports describe the damage and injuries, and nothing beyond them.
Escalation in Idlib
Also on 20 February, Turkish-backed rebels launched an offensive in the Idlib Governorate against government forces, as part of the wider northwestern Syria offensive that ran from December 2019 to March 2020. A Russian air strike killed two Turkish soldiers and injured five others. Turkey said a retaliatory strike killed 50 Syrian troops. Several tanks and armoured personnel carriers were destroyed near the village of Nayrab.
The same day, Turkey formally asked its NATO ally, the United States, to deploy Patriot surface-to-air missile systems on the Syria–Turkey border. The stated aim was to deter Syrian and Russian air strikes on Turkish troops.
Sanctions over Venezuelan oil
On 18 February 2020, the US State Department added the Russian oil company Rosneft Trading S.A. to its financial blacklist. The stated reason was that the company had helped facilitate the sale of Venezuelan oil.
What links them
The reports do not connect these events to one another. Taken together, they show a region where a domestic flare-up in Ukraine unfolded alongside a sharpening confrontation involving Russian and Turkish forces in Syria. In the same days, Washington used financial sanctions against a Russian company over Venezuela.
