Two Ukrainian appeals made in April 2018

What did Ukraine ask of the outside world in the days leading up to 25 April 2018? Two appeals, both dated 19 April 2018, offer an answer.

The first concerned the war in Donbass. Ecology minister Ostap Semerak warned of a major nuclear disaster if pro-Russia separatists went ahead with a plan to flood a mine where a small nuclear weapon had been tested in the 1970s. He appealed for international assistance to prevent the flooding.

The second was ecclesiastical and political. On the same day the Verkhovna Rada backed an appeal by the President to Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch, asking him to grant a Tomos on autocephaly for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

Two requests, one direction

The subjects differ sharply: one is a security and environmental warning from a minister, the other a formal parliamentary endorsement of a request to a religious authority abroad. Yet both turned to outside actors. In one case Kyiv sought help to avert a hazard linked to the occupied east; in the other it sought a decision that only the Ecumenical Patriarch could make.

Looking back from 2026, the two items show how Ukraine framed its priorities in April 2018: the consequences of the Donbass conflict were treated as an international matter, and church independence was pursued through a request to Constantinople.