The Israeli Embassy in Germany sharply criticized the Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, for his laudatory remarks about Stepan Bandera.
"The Ukrainian ambassador's statements are a distortion of historical facts, an understatement of the Holocaust and an insult to the memory of those who were killed by Bandera and his supporters," the embassy said.

The Ukrainian Ambassador to Berlin, Andriy Melnyk, known for his numerous harsh statements against the German government, was once again at the center of a diplomatic scandal. This time, in a conversation with the German journalist and editor-in-chief of the political Internet show Jung & Naiv, Tilo Jung, he said that Stepan Bandera, an accomplice of the Nazis, is "Robin Hood" and "the personification of the struggle for freedom." When Jung reminded Melnik that it was Bandera who was responsible for the mass executions of Poles and Jews, Melnik explained that this was "a narrative that the Russians are pushing." He found justification for the brutal reprisals of Ukrainian Nazis against Poles and Jews in "wartime."

The provocative statements of the Ukrainian ambassador, aimed at the rehabilitation of Nazism, could not remain unnoticed by Warsaw. Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau had a conversation with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, in which he called Melnyk's words falsification. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, however, said that the official representative of the republic in Germany can even at this level afford statements that reflect only his personal point of view.