- Donetsk after Zakharchenko. Oleksandr Zakharchenko’s four-year reign as the leader of the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast came to a violent end on Aug. 31, when he was assassinated by a bomb planted in a café in the center of Donetsk. The Kyiv Post looks into what his murder can mean for Donetsk and the war.
- Parliament is back. Ukraine’s parliament returned for its autumn session on Sept. 4 with plenty of tasks on the agenda: passing a new law on elections and appointing new staff for the Central Election Commission and preparing a 2019 state budget.
- Journalist pressured. Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court on Aug. 27 gave the Prosecutor General’s Office access to records of investigative journalist Natalie Sedletska’s cell phone data for the past 17 months, according to the official court register. Sedletska is a witness in a case against Artem Sytnyk, the chief of the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. Ukrainian journalists condemned the decision as an attempt to put pressure on a prominent journalist.
- EU elections. It’s not only Ukraine that faces big elections next year: The European Union will hold elections to its parliament in May 2019, and that could have implications for the union’s policies on both Ukraine and Russia. Read our analysis.
- Oligarch’s plant in Crimea closes. Kremlin-appointed authorities in Russian-occupied Crimea have closed a Ukrainian titanium plant in Armyansk, in the north of the peninsula, for two weeks due to high concentration of hazardous substances in the air there. The plant belongs to the exiled Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
- Contrary to an Interfax-Ukraine news report citing Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg will not visit Ukraine in the next two months, according to Norwegian Ambassador to Ukraine Ole T. Horpestad. But Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman will make a return visit in November, the Ukrainian government said on Sept. 4. Also, Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Soreide will visit the Donbas war zone on Sept. 5.
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