From the Liveblog of
Monday, May 25, 2026
Israel objects to Ukrainian reburial with state honors of Nazi collaborator
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The Foreign Ministry expresses Israel’s objections to an official Ukrainian state reburial of a Ukrainian political and military leader who was connected to military units that collaborated with the Nazis.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky provided full state honors for the reburial ceremony.
“We regret the decision to hold an official state reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andriy Melnyk, who collaborated with the Nazis. There is no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators,” the Foreign Ministry says in a statement on X.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center similarly writes on X: “The reinterment of Andriy Melnyk for a state burial in Ukraine raises serious concerns. 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.”
Melnyk, who died in 1964, was the leader of a branch of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a prominent independence group that challenged Soviet rule, including by working with the Nazis.
The OUN was mainly active between the 1930s and 1950s, and its members took part in the deportation and massacres of Jews and Polish people.
The reburial was held at the National Military Memorial in the Kyiv region, a cemetery opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Times of Israel Community.