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What did 10 July 2020 leave unresolved in Luhansk?
Summary
A look back at the wildfire emergency in eastern Ukraine and a Lithuanian broadcast ban that framed the days before 10 July 2020.
What was the picture in Ukraine and its neighbourhood on 10 July 2020? Two reports from the preceding days set the scene.
On 7 July 2020, hundreds of firefighters and rescue workers were deployed against wildfires in Luhansk Oblast, in eastern Ukraine. The fires had killed six people and destroyed more than 120 houses. Serhiy Haidai, the Luhansk governor, said some of the blazes might have been caused by arson. By 10 July 2020, the toll and the question of how the fires started were the central issues for the region.
A day later, on 8 July 2020, Lithuania banned the Russian state-owned television network RT. The reason given was the channel's connection with Dmitry Kiselyov, who is sanctioned by the European Union for his role in the 2014 Ukrainian crisis.
The two items were unrelated in kind: one a local emergency with human losses, the other a regulatory decision tied to sanctions. Together they show the range of concerns facing Ukraine and its neighbours as 10 July 2020 arrived: physical damage at home, and a dispute over Russian state media abroad.
