Home › Opinion › What did the EU agree on 2 October 2020?
What did the EU agree on 2 October 2020?
Summary
A retrospective on the European Council's sanctions decision on Belarus and the wildfires that had struck eastern Ukraine a day earlier.
What did European leaders settle on 2 October 2020, and what was happening in Ukraine at the time? The European Council agreed on sanctions against Belarus, a step linked to international reactions to the 2020 Belarusian presidential election and the protests that followed.
The decision had been held up by Cyprus. Its opposition was lifted when the Council also agreed on a warning to Turkey, so the Belarus measures and the message to Ankara were settled together. The outcome touched two sets of relations at once: those between the European Union and Belarus, and those between the European Union and Turkey.
For readers in Kyiv and across the region, the day sat alongside a domestic emergency. On 1 October 2020, a series of wildfires swept through part of eastern Ukraine. Eight people were killed and ten others were injured.
The two stories were unconnected, but they marked the same stretch of days: a regional diplomatic decision in Europe, and a deadly natural disaster at home.
