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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   204 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 4, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation

Israel criticized Ukraine on Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.

Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II.

[...]

The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”

“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,” the post read.

[...]

Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

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