Andrij Melnyk has been permanently present in Germany for months. Tirelessly and sometimes with little diplomatic means, he fights for the interests of his country, which has been invaded by Russia. According to one report, he could now move up the ranks within Ukraine’s civil service.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, could return to Kyiv later this year. There are plans to make the 46-year-old his country’s deputy foreign minister, as reported by the “Bild” newspaper, citing several Ukrainian sources. The newspaper quotes an official as saying that this proposal was made to the President of Ukraine. “Andriy Melnyk is very much appreciated in Kyiv for his work.” The change could take place in the summer.
Melnyk has been ambassador to Germany since September 2015. Previously, he was, among other things, Honorary Consul in Hamburg. The law graduate has been working in the diplomatic service since 1997. Melnyk polarized with his partly not very diplomatic demeanor since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression. He repeatedly criticized the federal government for what he saw as too hesitant behavior when it came to aid for the attacked country.
Only recently did Melnyk cause a stir with statements about the former nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. Melnyk defended Bandera in an interview and said: “Bandera was not a mass murderer of Jews and Poles.” There is no evidence for that. Bandera was the ideological leader of the radical wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Nationalist partisans from western Ukraine were responsible for ethnically motivated expulsions in 1943, in which tens of thousands of Polish civilians were murdered. The Foreign Ministry in Kyiv had distanced itself from this view and classified it as Melnyk’s private opinion, which did not correspond to Kiev’s official line. According to “Bild”, a possible transfer of Melnyk is not to be understood as a dismissal.
