Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk will likely be faraway from his publish in Berlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated in a decree revealed on Saturday. Ukraine’s envoys to the Czech Republic, India, Norway, and Hungary had been additionally dismissed.
Zelenskyy and his aides didn’t present causes for the strikes, with the president later saying choice was “a traditional a part of diplomatic apply.”
Nonetheless, the 46-year-old Melnyk has been more and more at odds with politicians in Germany, the place he brazenly slammed leaders over their Russia coverage. Most notably, in Could, he known as Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liver sausage” — a German time period roughly equal to “snowflake” in English.
Why did Melnyk conflict with Scholz?
The controversial feedback in regards to the chancellor had been prompted by an earlier dispute with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Melnyk criticized Steinmeier for his “net of contacts with Russia” and stated that the German president noticed his ties with Moscow as “basic — even sacred.”
“It doesn’t matter what occurs, even the [Russian] invasion would not play an enormous function,” Melnyk advised the Tagesspiegel paper. The Ukrainian ambassador additionally known as out an adviser to Scholz and the state secretary in Germany’s Overseas Ministry for his or her ties with Russia.
Per week later, Steinmeier stated his plans to go to Kyiv have been rebuked by the Ukrainian management in a transfer Scholz known as “irksome.”
Melnyk stated the chancellor himself ought to go to Kyiv. After Scholz stated he wouldn’t make the journey as a result of Steinmeier’s go to was denied, Melnyk fired again at Scholz with the “offended liver sausage” remark.
Melnyk went on to say that it could be even higher for the German authorities to “shortly fulfill the request from the parliament about sending heavy weapons.” His feedback had been extensively criticized by senior politicians in Germany.
How did the dispute finish?
In early June, Melnyk advised the Kyiv Publish that — whereas he liked Germany — “What I hate right here in Germany is hypocrisy, vanity, and that many German politicians used to inform fairy tales and provides empty guarantees. You would not anticipate Germans to be like that. They’re considered trustworthy, hardworking and dependable, however my modest expertise has not at all times confirmed that.”
The German chancellor and the Ukrainian ambassador appeared to solely bury the hatchet in mid-June after Scholz visited Kyiv alongside France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Mario Draghi. Lower than per week later, Melnyk stated he regretted his remarks and promised to personally apologize to Scholz.
Scholz made a go to to Kyiv in June for talks with Zelenskyy
What did Melnyk stated about Stepan Bandera?
However Melnyk’s newest controversy, the one which will have been an excessive amount of for Kyiv, pertains to Ukrainian WWII ultranationalist Stepan Bandera. Whereas Bandera is praised as a hero by far-right extremists in Ukraine, others see him as a Nazi collaborator whose militants massacred hundreds of Jews and Poles.
In an interview 10 days in the past, Melnyk stated Bandera “was not a mass assassin of Jews and Poles” and there was no proof to help the declare. The Ukrainian ambassador blamed the Soviet Union for allegedly demonizing Bandera and he tried to attenuate his collaborations with the Nazi regime.
The interview was shortly condemned by Israel and Poland.
“The assertion made by the Ukrainian ambassador is a distortion of the historic info, belittles the Holocaust and is an insult to those that had been murdered by Bandera and his individuals,” the Israeli Embassy stated.
Polish Deputy Overseas Minister Marcin Przydacz wrote on a neighborhood on-line platform that “such an opinion and such phrases are completely unacceptable.”
Uncharacteristically for Melnyk, the ambassador didn’t instantly reply to the controversy. Days later, he posted a tweet saying the “DECIDEDLY rejects” the “absurd allegations” posted by the Israeli Embassy.
“Everybody who is aware of me, know that I’ve at all times condemned the Holocaust in harshest potential phrases,” Melnyk stated.
By then, nonetheless, it was too late.
The outrage had already prompted a response in Kyiv, the place the Ukrainian Overseas Ministry shortly introduced that Melnyk’s opinion was “his personal and doesn’t mirror the place of the Ministry of Overseas Affairs of Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy didn’t say the place Melnyk can be stationed subsequent. In response to media studies, he’s anticipated to take up a place within the Ukrainian Overseas Ministry.
dj/sms (DPA, AP, AFP, Reuters)