Two regional jolts before 19 July 2023

What was unsettling the region in the days before 19 July 2023? Two reports, both dated earlier that week, stood out.

On 16 July 2023, Oleg Khorzhan, a Transnistrian communist and opposition leader, was assassinated in a stabbing attack in his office. The reports described the killing as an assassination, and it removed an opposition figure from Transnistrian politics.

A day earlier, on 15 July 2023, Russia announced that it would investigate whether the North Korean Hwasong-18 missile had landed in the country's exclusive economic zone. The announcement placed Russia's relations with North Korea in the news, with a question about where the missile came down.

The two events were unconnected, and the reports drew no link between them. Together they showed how a single weekend could bring a political killing on Ukraine's border region and a missile question for Moscow.