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Three ex-presidents' appeal on a Ukrainian church tomos
Summary
A look back at an appeal by Ukraine's three former presidents, issued on 8 May 2018, and a separate US naval decision days earlier.
What did Ukraine's former leaders want from the church question on 9 May 2018? A day earlier, on 8 May 2018, three of them had put their names to a joint public appeal.
Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko, all Presidents of Ukraine before the office passed to its later holders, signed an address to the Ukrainian people and to believers in Ukraine. Its subject was the granting of a tomos of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, as reported at the time.
The address was aimed at the public and at the faithful rather than at a single institution. Its signatories were the three former heads of state, which gave the appeal a cross-generational character within Ukrainian politics.
A parallel signal from Washington
A few days earlier, on 4 May 2018, the United States Navy re-established its Second Fleet, which had been disbanded in 2011. The move was explained by reference to recent heightened tensions between NATO and Russia.
Some commentators have described such tensions with the label Second Cold War. The term has been used by scholars and journalists for heightened geopolitical tensions in the 21st century, usually between the United States and NATO on one side and Russia or China on the other. Others have discouraged its use for ongoing tensions.
Two separate threads
The two developments were distinct. One was a domestic appeal on the church question; the other was a naval decision tied to NATO-Russia relations. Both belonged to the news of the first days of May 2018, and the appeal of 8 May 2018 stands as a record of how Ukraine's former presidents chose to address the country on the issue.
