2018 was largely a disturbing year with two big events dominating the news: Russians captured and imprisoned 23 Ukrainian sailors near annexed Crimea while the horrifying murder of anti-corruption activist Kateryna Gandziuk’s unsettled the whole country.
Amid this happening, ex-President Petro Poroshenko was also on his way to merge three Orthodox churches in Ukraine into one, creating the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Meanwhile, the country’s politicians were getting ready for the upcoming 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections.
Ukraine beats Gazprom
In a morale-boosting decision, Ukrainian state-owned energy company Naftogaz won a ruling in Stockholm’s arbitration court that Russia’s Gazprom must pay it $2.56 billion in resolution of a pricing and supply dispute which began after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
Savchenko goes to prison
Former Russian-held prisoner, volunteer fighter and helicopter pilot, Nadia Savchenko, who was hailed as a heroine during her imprisonment and became a member of the Ukrainian parliament after her release, was arrested in the same parliament on charges of terrorism and planning to blow up government premise.
She was released from detention a year later, on April 15, 2019.
Kivan buys Kyiv Post
Ukraine’s only international news media outlet Kyiv Post got a new owner on March 21, 2018, in its 23rd year.
The Kyiv Post has been operating since 1995, which means the newspaper will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2020. The credit goes to hundreds of journalists who over the years upheld the highest professional standards in journalism, and to the Kyiv Post’s owners who backed its editorial independence: Jed Sunden (1995–2009), Mohammad Zahoor (2009–2018) and current publisher Adnan Kivan, owner of the Kadorr Group in Odesa.
Reportedly, Kivan paid at least $3.5 million for the newspaper, but he refused to disclose the exact price.
Kivan is one of the largest real estate businesspeople in Ukraine: his company has around 70 residential and office buildings as well as shopping centers and mosques. Most of his construction projects are in Odesa, but several are under construction in Kyiv as well.
US gives weapons
In April, officials reveal that the United States transferred 210 Javelin anti-armor man-portable weapons to Ukraine. It is the first time any allies of Ukraine had provided lethal weapons.
Since Kyiv received them, the Ukrainian military credit the mere presence of the cutting-edge “tank-killer” rockets with deterring pro-Kremlin forces from using tanks in eastern Ukraine.
Crimean bridge goes up
In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin opened a 19-kilometer, $3.7 billion worth bridge between the Russian mainland and Crimea, providing Moscow’s only direct road link to the occupied Ukrainian peninsula.
Arkady Babchenko stages own murder
Ukrainian authorities staged a high-profile journalist’s murder, winning mixed response.
In a bizarre sting operation that set the world’s media abuzz, the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, staged the murder of Russian dissident journalist Arkady Babchenko in Kyiv. The SBU justified the fake crime as part of a special operation to uncover a Kremlin plot to kill at least 30 other people, many of them journalists. Babchenko cooperated with the authorities.
While some praised the agents for the operation, others, including some Western diplomats, pointed out that it undermined the world’s trust in Ukraine and dismissed it as a publicity stunt.
Confronting Kolomoisky
In June, in the High Court in London, lawyers for the new, state-appointed owners of PrivatBank outlined how the bank’s previous owners, Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennady Boholyubov, siphoned $5.5 billion. The hearings lasted for 10 days.
The lawyers argued to retain a freeze on billions of dollars of the two oligarchs’ assets as the first steps to recover money missing from PrivatBank.
Kolomoisky and Boholyubov deny the allegations. Their lawyers won a ruling that the frozen assets should be released, but an appeal against that decision was allowed and the funds were ordered to remain frozen. The final outcome of court proceedings is pending and it may take years.
Horrific murder of activist
In July, Kateryna Gandziuk, a civil rights and anti-corruption activist, who exposed corruption in her hometown of Kherson, was attacked by assailants who doused her face and body with sulphuric acid. She succumbed to her painful and hideous injuries on Nov. 4, 2018.
Gandziuk’s murder unsettled the country, sparking large protests and the foundation of a movement “Who killed Katya Gandziuk?” which has named several Kherson officials as potentially behind the murder.
Gandziuk herself believed that the attack was connected to her efforts to expose corruption in Kherson city and oblast.
McCain dies
A great friend of Ukraine, Senator John McCain, died on Aug. 25 after a long battle with cancer.
McCain was a U.S. pilot during the Vietnam War. After being shot down by Communist forces, he spent seven years as a prisoner in a war camp where he was routinely tortured. His father was the U.S admiral in senior command of the war in Vietnam and the Vietnamese offered to release John McCain ahead of other prisoners — a breach of a sacred American military honor code. McCain refused the offer.
After leaving the Air Force he embarked on a political career and became one of his country’s most influential and admired politicians. He ran, unsuccessfully, for president.
As a senator, he staunchly supported Ukraine and came to the mass protests of the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013–2014. He was key in securing U.S. military aid, including anti-tank Javelin missiles for Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
Russia attacks ships
Russian naval ships attacked and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels that were passing from the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait to the Azov Sea.
The Russians captured 23 Ukrainian sailors and imprisoned them in Moscow. The Ukrainian sailors stalwartly refused to cave in and criticize their country despite threats and blandishments by their Russian captors. They were released in a prisoner swap in September 2019.
Independent church
After some 300 years of being subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Church in the Eastern Orthodox global hierarchy, the Ukrainian church became independent.
A conference of senior Church figures at Kyiv’s Saint Sophia Cathedral appointed Metropolitan Epihany to head a new Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It comprises of the faithfuls who split from Moscow after Ukrainian independence in 1991 to form their own church and another that was established in the diaspora a century ago.
The conference called on parishes under Moscow’s auspices to switch to the new Ukrainian Church. That independent church was recognized a few weeks later by a charter called Tomos conferred by the world Orthodox Church hierarchy in Istanbul.
Svitolina shines
Elina Svitolina maintained her reputation as Ukraine’s top woman tennis player who had been ranked number three in the world the previous year. In 2018, she won the World Tennis Association’s Australian open competition adding to her 12 other WTA singles titles.
