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What happened in Kyiv and Warsaw by 30 May 2018?
Summary
Two reports from late May 2018 pointed to security concerns across the region, in Kyiv and in Warsaw.
What was unfolding across Ukraine and its neighbours on 30 May 2018? Two developments from the preceding days framed the picture.
On 29 May 2018, the SBU, Ukraine's security service, carried out an operation in Kyiv to prevent an attempt on the life of Arkady Babchenko, an opposition Russian journalist. The operation placed the Ukrainian capital at the centre of a security story involving a critic of Russia.
A day earlier, on 28 May 2018, Poland's Minister of Defence, Mariusz Błaszczak, said he had recently held talks with US officials in Washington D.C. about permanently stationing thousands of US troops in Poland. He described the idea as a deterrent against Russia.
Two threads, one theme
The two events were separate: one a security-service operation in Kyiv, the other a defence discussion between Warsaw and Washington. Yet both involved Russia as the stated or evident point of concern, one through the protection of a Russian opposition journalist in Ukraine, the other through Poland's push for a lasting US military presence as deterrence.
