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Andriy Melnyk has not been criticized for the first time for dubious statements
Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa
The Israeli Embassy in Germany has accused the Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk of playing down the Holocaust after his controversial interview statements.
Melnyk has been criticized for comments about former Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera (1909-1959).
"The statements of the Ukrainian ambassador are a distortion of historical facts, a trivialization of the Holocaust and an insult to those who were murdered by Bandera and his people," the Israeli embassy in Berlin said on Twitter.
Melnyk's statements "also undermine the courageous struggle of the Ukrainian people to live according to democratic values and in peace".
Nationalist partisans from western Ukraine were responsible for ethnically motivated expulsions in 1943, in which tens of thousands of Polish civilians were murdered.
Melnyk defended the leader Bandera in an interview with the journalist Tilo Jung and said: "Bandera was not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles." There is no evidence for that.
Melnyk has been widely criticized for his statements.
The well-known pianist Igor Levit condemned the excerpt on Twitter as "hypocrisy".
The Ukrainian ambassador is denying part of his story, Levit argues.
“He plays the ignorant.
What a denial of history.
What a tampering with history.' Then he adds: 'Shame on you.'
The Polish government was also outraged by Melnyk on Friday.
"Such an opinion and such words are absolutely unacceptable," Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz told the Internet platform Wirtualna Polska.
When asked if Poland expected an apology from Melnyk, Przydacz said: "We are more interested in the position of the Ukrainian government than that of individuals."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine also issued a statement - and distanced itself from Melnyk's statements.
"The opinion of the Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, which he expressed in an interview with a German journalist, is his personal and does not reflect the position of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry," said the authority in English on Friday night written statement on their official website.
The ambassador has long been provocative with his admiration for the nationalist leader Bandera.
Immediately after taking office in 2015, he laid flowers at his grave, and after the start of the Ukraine war he tweeted against everyone who denounced this hero worship.
svs/dpa