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What did Ukraine's ex-presidents ask for on 8 May?
Summary
A retrospective on two reports from early May 2018: a joint appeal by three former presidents and a mass poisoning in Cherkasy.
What was happening in Ukraine's public life by 11 May 2018? Two reports from 8 May, three days earlier, show a country dealing with both a political-religious appeal and a local emergency.
On 8 May 2018, Ukraine's former presidents Leonid Kravchuk, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko signed an address to the Ukrainian people and to believers in Ukraine. It concerned the granting of a Tomos of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The joint signatures of three former heads of state placed the question before the public as a shared appeal.
The same day brought a different kind of news from Cherkasy. A mass poisoning affected more than 90 people, mostly children from a single school.
The two reports have no stated connection, and none should be assumed. Taken together, they show the range of what Ukrainians were following in the days before 11 May 2018: a debate over the status of their church, and a public-health emergency in one city.
