In a video address, Zelensky announced on Dec. 20 that he has appointed Andrey Melnyk to be Ukraine’s next ambassador to the U.N.
Melnyk became famous as Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany from 2014 to 2022 for lobbing f-bombs and other insults at Olaf Scholz. Melnik has defended Stepan Bandera, whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) exterminated an estimated 70,000 Jews and Poles in Ukraine in the summer of 1943 alone as an adjunct of the Nazi war machine and in fulfillment of their own radical ideas on ethnic purity, during World War II.
Melnyk claimed on a German podcast that Bandera had nothing to do with the mass murder of Jews and Poles, comparing him to Robin Hood, who “is being revered by everyone” despite being someone who “didn’t act according to the law that was in force then.” The remarks caused outrage in Germany, Poland and Israel, with Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry forced to clarify that the ambassador’s comments had reflected his own views, rather than Kiev’s official stance.
