Status: 07/01/2022 10:59 a.m
With new statements about the former nationalist leader Bandera, the Ukrainian ambassador Melnyk caused criticism, especially in Poland – now the foreign ministry in Kyiv has distanced itself from Melnyk’s statements.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has distanced itself from statements made by its Berlin ambassador, Andriy Melnyk. It is about statements by Melnyk in which he defends the controversial Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera and contradicts historical events. A statement said: “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.”
In the interview with the journalist Tilo Jung for his online format “Jung und Naiv”, Melnyk denied that there was evidence of the mass murder of Jews by supporters of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Bandera. “Bandera was not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles,” said Melnyk. Bandera’s personal participation in the genocide has not been proven, said Melnyk. Bandera was therefore not part of the Holocaust. There are these narratives from the Russian side, but that is not correct, Melnyk insisted.
Massacre with tens of thousands of victims
In addition, Melnyk denied that Bandera collaborated with the German National Socialists. Bandera was the ideological leader of the radical wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Nationalist partisans from western Ukraine were responsible for ethnically motivated 1943 expulsions in which tens of thousands of Polish civilians were murdered. Bandera himself was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 1941 to 1944. After the Second World War he went to Germany, where he was murdered in 1959 by an agent of the Soviet secret service KGB.
When asked about the mass murders of Polish civilians, Melnyk said that the same massacres by Poles in Ukraine had taken place in the same way. It was a war and “the Poles” now wanted to politicize “this story”.
To provide historical evidence, Jung quoted a leaflet Bandera is said to have distributed at the time: “Muscovites, Poles, Hungarians and Jews are your enemies, destroy them!” Melnyk pretends to be ignorant. “I’m not going to tell you today that I’m distancing myself from that. And that’s it!” The ambassador finally said.
The historian Franziska Davies, who specializes in Ukraine, wrote on Twitter: “To say ‘Bandera was not a mass murderer’ is quibbling on the part of Melnyk. Bandera has no personal involvement in the mass murders, he was imprisoned by the Germans shortly after the start of the war. But he was a central figure of the OUN. How many Nazis didn’t murder personally? They are mass murderers nonetheless. How do we deal with these denials?”
Criticism from Poland
Melnyk was sharply criticized for his statements, especially in Poland. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau announced on Twitter that he had discussed the ambassador’s statements with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. He thanked the “quick public intervention in this matter.”
The statement of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs highlighted the good relations between Ukraine and Poland. Thanks are due to Warsaw for the current “unprecedented help” in the war against Russia. “We are convinced that relations between Ukraine and Poland are currently at their peak.” .
Melnyk’s attitude has been provocative for a long time
The Ukrainian ambassador, who reports to the foreign ministry, repeatedly provokes with his attitude towards the nationalist leader. Immediately after taking office in 2015, for example, he laid flowers at Bandera’s grave in Munich. Melnyk is not the only one in Ukraine who admires Bandera. He is hailed by many as a partisan and national hero for his fight for independence from the Soviet Union.
But historian Davies emphasizes that Bandera is also a controversial figure in Ukraine. “It has only been possible to speak publicly about these issues since the 1990s. The special suffering of the Jews during the Second World War was only officially recognized by the state in independent Ukraine.” It is Ukrainian historians in particular who have often carried out basic research on the Holocaust in Ukraine in very precarious working conditions. Especially after the Maidan 2013/14, the discussions at the universities received a new impetus. Many young Ukrainians in particular are ahead of Melnyk in this respect. “They don’t deny, they discuss.”