Selenskyj recalls Ambassador Melnyk 

Created: 07/10/2022Updated: 07/10/2022 06:38

By: Katja Thorwarth

The Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk will leave Germany.

Ukraine's President Selenskyj speaks of "rotation".

Update from Sunday, July 10, 6:30 a.m .:

The Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk has to vacate his post in Germany.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recalled the 46-year-old diplomat on Saturday, as did the Ukrainian ambassadors in Norway, the Czech Republic, Hungary and India.

In a video message, Selenskyj spoke of a normal process in the evening.

"This issue of rotation is a common part of diplomatic practice," he said, without naming any of the five ambassadors.

It was initially unclear whether Melnyk would be scheduled for another high-ranking position in Kyiv or elsewhere after his dismissal.

Melnyk repeatedly sharply criticized the federal government

A spokeswoman for the Federal Foreign Office said on request: “The Federal Foreign Office has not yet been notified of the ambassador’s dismissal.”

Melnyk had not just made a name for himself as a harsh critic of the federal government since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

Most recently, however, he himself came under massive criticism for statements about the Ukrainian nationalist and anti-Semite Stepan Bandera.

Zelenskyj also changed the head of the regional government in the embattled southern Ukrainian Cherson.

Sunday is the 137th day of the war for Ukraine since the start of the Russian attack at the end of February.

Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, is sticking with Bandera, who is considered a Nazi collaborator.

© Soeren Stache/dpa

Ukraine distances itself from Ambassador Andriy Melnyk

First report: Kyiv/Berlin – In Ukraine, especially since the fall of the government in 2014, a cult has been going on around Stepan Bandera and representatives of the organization “Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)” he leads.

Bandera is credited with being largely responsible for the ideology of the organization's radical wing.

Hundreds of streets have been named after him and other "OUN" representatives. 

Ukrainian Ambassador Melnyk under criticism for testimony on nationalist leader Bandera

It is proved that in 1940 and 1941 Bandera prepared a plan “according to which he should become the leader of the Ukrainian fascist state.

This state should be purged of Jews, Poles, Russians and political enemies,” writes historian Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe on

The Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk sees things differently and relegates criticism of him to the realm of Russian propaganda.

Just recently in the interview format "young and naive": "That's the narrative that the Russians are still pushing through today, and that finds support in Germany, in Poland and also in Israel," explained Melnyk.

And Bandera was "not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles".

There is no evidence for that.

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He did not only receive criticism for this on social media.

Now the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has also 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," the agency said on Friday night on its official website With.

In the statement, which was written in English, the Foreign Ministry also thanked Warsaw for the current "unprecedented help" in the war against Russia.

It literally says: "We are convinced that relations between Ukraine and Poland are currently at their peak." In Poland, Melnyk, who reports to the Foreign Ministry as ambassador, was met with criticism.

Melnyk himself, who is otherwise very active on Twitter, has not yet taken any further position.

(ktho/dpa)