Home › World › Two reports from early May 2018
Two reports from early May 2018
Summary
A look back at a mass poisoning in Cherkasy and the re-creation of a US naval command, both reported in the days before 9 May 2018.
What was the news picture on 9 May 2018 for readers following Ukraine and its neighbours? Two reports from the preceding days stood out, one local and one geopolitical.
A school poisoning in Cherkasy
As reported on 8 May 2018, a mass poisoning in the Ukrainian city of Cherkasy had left more than 90 people affected. Most of them were children from a single school. The reports available on that date described the scale of the incident, and by the following day it remained a matter of acute local concern.
A fleet returns
On 4 May 2018, the United States Navy re-established its Second Fleet, which had been disbanded in 2011. The move was attributed to recently heightened tensions between NATO and Russia.
The decision sat within a wider vocabulary that scholars and journalists have used to describe 21st-century tensions between the United States and NATO on one side and Russia or China on the other. Some have called this a Second Cold War, though others have discouraged use of the term for any ongoing tensions.
The two stories were unrelated in origin and scale. One was a public-health emergency in a single Ukrainian city, the other a change in the organisation of a navy. Together they show how varied the news affecting the region was in the first days of May 2018.
