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What the US Second Fleet's return signalled in May 2018
Summary
A look back at the navy's re-established fleet and a mass poisoning among schoolchildren in Cherkasy.
What was happening in the news cycle around 10 May 2018? Two items from the preceding days stand out: a naval reorganisation in the United States and a mass poisoning in central Ukraine.
On 4 May 2018, the United States Navy re-established its Second Fleet, which had been disbanded in 2011. The navy cited recent heightened tensions between NATO and Russia as the reason. The step was later placed by some scholars and journalists within a wider debate over whether to call such tensions a "Second Cold War", a term that others have discouraged for ongoing disputes.
In Ukraine, attention turned to Cherkasy. By 8 May 2018, a mass poisoning there had affected more than 90 people, most of them children from a single school.
The two stories were unrelated in nature. One concerned military planning among NATO states and Russia; the other was a public-health emergency in a Ukrainian city. Both were part of the picture in the days leading up to 10 May 2018.
