What Kyiv's Donbas law meant on 18 January 2018

What did Ukraine's parliament decide on 18 January 2018, and what else was happening around the occupied territories? On that date the Verkhovna Rada passed the Law on the de-occupation of Donbas in its second reading and as a whole.

The vote came five days after Russia deployed a second S-400 anti-air missile battalion in Crimea, as reported on 13 January 2018. Crimea had been invaded and occupied by Russia in February and March 2014, then annexed after a referendum that was illegitimate. That began the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Two tracks, one conflict

The two developments sat on different fronts of the same dispute. In Kyiv, lawmakers gave final approval to a law that dealt with the occupied part of Donbas. In Crimea, Russia added to the air-defence systems on the peninsula it had annexed in 2014.

The juxtaposition shows how the conflict was being handled in early 2018: Ukraine acted through legislation, while Russia reinforced its military position in the territory it had seized. The deployment of a second S-400 battalion was a concrete military step; the Rada's vote was a legal and political one.

What it meant

The vote on 18 January 2018 was the end of the Rada's passage of the law, which had cleared its final stage. The Crimean deployment reported five days earlier underlined that the annexation of the peninsula remained a live security issue. Beyond these two events, nothing more can be said about their immediate effects on that date.