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What did Ukraine's parliament decide on 13 March 2018?
Summary
A look back at a law on disability groups for anti-terrorist operation participants, and an arrest days earlier that drew attention to the same conflict.
What did Ukraine's parliament decide on 13 March 2018? According to reports at the time, the Verkhovna Rada adopted law No. 7161, an amendment to the law on the rehabilitation of disabled people in Ukraine. It concerned the setting of a disability group for participants in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO), the official name then used for the government's operation in the east of the country.
The measure was narrow in scope. It amended an existing rehabilitation law rather than creating a new framework, and the reports describe it only in terms of disability-group status for ATO participants. That focus reflected the weight the conflict carried in domestic politics, as legislators addressed the position of those who had served in the operation.
Five days earlier, on 8 March 2018, a separate story had surfaced. Volodymyr Ruban, head of the Centre for the Liberation of Prisoners, was detained at the Maiorske checkpoint. He was held during an attempt to move weapons and ammunition illegally out of the ATO zone.
The two items were unrelated in subject: one a legislative step on veterans' status, the other a detention at a crossing point. Together they show how the ATO featured in Ukrainian public life in March 2018, in both lawmaking and law enforcement.
