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What the Tehran crash meant for Ukraine's airline
Summary
A look back at 12 January 2020, days after a Ukrainian airliner came down near Tehran and as a new gas pipeline opened.
What did the economic picture look like on 12 January 2020, as Ukraine absorbed the loss of a passenger jet? Four days earlier, on 8 January 2020, a Boeing 737 operated by the airline MAU crashed near Tehran, and 176 people died.
On 11 January 2020, Iran's president officially acknowledged that the country's armed forces had shot the aircraft down by mistake with a missile. The admission settled the question of what had brought the plane down, and it left the Ukrainian carrier at the centre of an international tragedy.
A second story on the same day of the calendar
The same day as the crash, 8 January 2020, brought a separate development in the region's energy trade. The heads of state of Turkey, Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria formally inaugurated the TurkStream gas pipelines.
The two events were unrelated, but both unfolded in the days before 12 January 2020 and both concerned the movement of people and resources across borders around Ukraine. One was a human and aviation loss for a Ukrainian company; the other was an infrastructure launch involving Ukraine's neighbours.
By 12 January 2020, the Iranian acknowledgement was the latest and most consequential of these developments for Ukrainian readers, while the pipeline inauguration marked a formal step for the four countries whose leaders took part.
