- Serhii Diachuk, a judge hearing the case of murders of the participants of the EuroMaidan Revolution which forced then-President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014, had been attacked in Kyiv on Sept. 14, the Council of Judges of Ukraine said.
- A split is looming over Eastern Orthodox Church as the Russian Church announced it would take steps to distance itself from the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate, to which all national churches subordinate, after the Patriarchate showed support to Ukrainian Church in its effort to get independent of Russia.
- Ukrainian journalist and fact-checker Oleksandr Gorohovskyi faces deportation in Kazakhstan, where he came to teach a journalism workshop. Kazakhstan authorities say he was supposed to get a visa to lead a workshop, while the journalists’ colleagues see it as a part of the authorities’ crackdown on the free press, and say Kazakhstan is borrowing a page from Russia’s book.
- At the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv, two presidential contenders, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Defense Minister Anatoly Grytsenko, and one possible contender, rock star Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, took to the stage to present their vision of Ukraine’s future. It was a discussion that put all three candidates out of their element, each in distinct ways.
- Also at the YES conference, three experts knowledgeable with how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime works discussed what may happen after his term is over. Their verdict: the future of Russia isn’t hopeless.
- Another panel at the YES conference had participants discuss the future of Ukraine in the context of “spheres of influence and zones of conflict.” The line-up included Ukraine Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker and German Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Norbert Roettgen, moderated by Munich Security Conference chief Wolfgang Ischinger.
- Meanwhile, also at YES, three U.S. intellectual leaders – former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, 66th Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Harvard University’s Lawrence Summers – contemplated on the future state of their country and its global role. They disagreed on some things.
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