“In connection with the statement of the Israeli Foreign Ministry ... we emphasize that Ukraine strongly condemns all forms of intolerance and anti-Semitism, and authorities at all levels are making efforts to combat their manifestations. It was also recognized by influential international and non-governmental organizations, as well as by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, ”the statement said.
The ministry added that this kind of assessment coincides with the data of the Jewish community of Ukraine and national human rights non-governmental organizations.
“Once again, we emphasize that civilized nations should proceed from the principle of honoring all the dead, and discussions in this area should be conducted at the level of historians and experts, not politicians,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry concluded.
On January 2, the ambassadors of Poland and Israel, Bartosz Ziechotsky and Yoel Lyon, expressed concern about the situation in Ukraine related to the celebration of Stepan Bandera and other Nazi collaborators.
In response to this, the press secretary of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Yekaterina Zelenko, stated that “every nation and every state independently determines and honors its heroes.”
As a result, on January 13, the Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement stating that "the persons responsible for the murders of Jews during the Holocaust and pogroms, as well as the anti-Semitic ideologists of the Ukrainian national movement, have recently become the object of public glorification in Ukraine."
In August 2019, in the Nikolaev region, unknown people drew a swastika and left insulting inscriptions on the monument to the victims of the Holocaust. Later, in the same region, vandals desecrated another monument dedicated to Jews, and also threatened Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.