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What 1 September 2020 meant for the region
Summary
A look back at border closures, espionage charges and regional accusations reported in the final days of August 2020.
What did the region's news look like on 1 September 2020? The reports from the preceding days point to three threads: pandemic border controls, Russia-related security disputes, and a few domestic stories in Ukraine.
Borders close in Hungary
On 28 August 2020, Hungary announced that it would close its borders to foreigners from 1 September, in an attempt to curb a rise in COVID-19 infections. Hungarians returning from abroad would have to go into two weeks of quarantine. Hungarians wishing to leave could do so only if they had provided two negative tests. The measure meant that 1 September marked the start of the restrictions.
Russia in the security headlines
Two reports from 29 and 30 August 2020 involved Russia. A senior advisor to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused Russia of arming Armenia since the start of the recent border clashes. Separately, French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly revealed that a lieutenant-colonel of the French army, stationed at a NATO base in Italy, had been arrested and indicted on charges of espionage on behalf of another government. He was reported to have supplied sensitive documents to an officer of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.
The two reports concerned different countries and different circumstances, and the reports did not link them. Both, however, placed Russia at the centre of accusations in the days before 1 September.
Ukraine: a fraud inquiry and an archaeological find
In Ukraine, the Security Service (SBU) searched the offices of the financial pyramid B2B Jewelry on 27 August 2020. According to preliminary data, about 600,000 people had been defrauded.
A different kind of story came on 28 August 2020 from the village of Horodnytsia in the Zhytomyr region, where a hoard of 32 silver coins dating from the years 1000–1019 was found.
Why it matters in retrospect
Taken together, the reports show how the first day of September 2020 arrived against a backdrop of pandemic restrictions tightening in Central Europe, accusations involving Russia from both the Caucasus and Western Europe, and Ukrainian news that ranged from large-scale alleged fraud to an archaeological discovery.
