Home › Opinion › Ukraine's violent week before 26 May 2020
Ukraine's violent week before 26 May 2020
Summary
A retrospective on a run of killings and police abuse allegations in Ukraine in the days before 26 May 2020, and on two wider regional rulings and accusations.
What did Ukrainians read in the news in the days leading up to 26 May 2020? Much of it was grim, and it was about violence at home.
On 21 May 2020, a conflict in Zhytomyr Oblast ended with a local resident killing seven people. As reported at the time, the shooting followed a drunken quarrel during a fishing trip, and the perpetrator was arrested afterwards.
On 23 May 2020, reports from Kagarlyk, in Kyiv Oblast, said police officers had beaten two people at a station and raped a woman several times. The same day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs confirmed that Valeriy Davydenko, an independent member of the Verkhovna Rada, had been found dead in his office in Kyiv with a gunshot wound to the head.
Beyond Ukraine's borders
Elsewhere in the region, on 21 May 2020 the European Court of Justice ruled that Hungarian authorities had circumvented EU law by holding Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers in unlawful detention at a camp near the Serbian border.
On 26 May 2020 itself, the United States Africa Command accused Russia of deploying fighter jets to eastern Libya. According to the accusation, the aircraft were to give air support to Russian mercenaries allied to Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who was locked in a civil war with the UN-recognised Government of National Accord.
The Ukrainian items shared one thread: serious violence, including an allegation of abuse by the police themselves, drew attention within the space of a few days.
