Joel Lion, Israel's ambassador to Ukraine, wrote on Twitter, Monday, "Condemning Glorification of dubious Ukrainian figures is not an interference in internal matters, In contrary, it is an essential obligation and the responsibility of every Israeli diplomat. It represents a shared moral duty to Israel and its many allies across the world."
He was responding to words attributed to Gennady Nadolenko, head of Ukraine’s diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv, that the Ukrainian government-sponsored honoring of Nazi collaborators Stepan Bandera and Andryi Melnyk is related to “internal issues of Ukrainian politics” and Israel’s protests about it are “counterproductive”. Nadolenko, in turn, was writing in response to an open letter by Lion and Polish counterpart Bartosz Cichocki.
Lion was backed by Israel's Foreign Ministry, which said, "Individuals responsible for the murder of Jews in the Holocaust and in pogroms, as well as Antisemitic ideologists of the Ukrainian National movement, have recently been subject of public glorification in Ukraine. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemns these phenomena."