Israel Condemns Zelensky Tribute To Ukrainian Nationalist Linked To Nazis

Israel condemned Ukraine on Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky presided over the reburial of Ukrainian nationalist leader Andriy Melnyk in Kyiv, honoring a figure whose movement collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

“We regret the decision to hold an official state reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andriy Melnyk, who collaborated with the Nazis,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said. “There is no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

Melnyk and his wife, Sofia, were reburied at Ukraine’s National Military Memorial Cemetery after their remains were transferred from Luxembourg. The ceremony was attended by senior Ukrainian officials, including Zelensky, as part of a wider effort to return the remains of Ukrainian nationalist figures buried abroad.

Ukraine presented the ceremony as a tribute to national independence fighters. Zelensky said Melnyk had returned “to a Ukraine that will not falter” and praised what he called “Ukrainian heroes” from past and present generations.

“It is extremely symbolic that our Ukrainian heroes of today, who snatched Ukraine from Russian hands in this war, rest alongside Ukrainians of previous generations who also worked to ensure that Ukraine was what it is, that Ukraine was itself, that Ukraine was free,” Zelensky said.

Melnyk led a faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, known as the OUN. The movement fought Soviet and Polish control over Ukrainian territory, but parts of it also cooperated with Nazi Germany during the war. Melnyk remains a deeply controversial figure because of the OUN’s role in violence against Jews and Poles.

Yad Vashem issued a sharp response, saying the state-backed tribute raised “serious concerns” because of Melnyk’s wartime record.

“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” Yad Vashem said. “Yad Vashem is deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”

For Israel, the ceremony reopened a long-running dispute over Ukraine’s honoring of wartime nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration and antisemitism. In 2019, Israel’s embassy in Kyiv urged Ukraine to remove Nazi collaborators from a proposed list of national heroes, warning against glorifying figures connected to wartime atrocities and the murder of Jews during the Holocaust. Ukraine has not yet publicly responded to the latest Israeli criticism.