The Ukrainian ambassador, in an effort to serve his country, has sometimes gone overboard with his choice of words. He doesn’t have to regret it. On the contrary: Andriy Melnyk held up a mirror to German politicians – and that was a good thing.
Ukrainians have a penchant for gallows humor. There is good reason for this: Hardly any people have suffered as much from foreign rule in the past 100 years as they did – and they all survived. Stalin let millions of Ukrainians starve to death, the Wehrmacht occupied their traditional territory, Putin had his army invade in February 2022, annexed more Ukrainian territory after Crimea and is now threatening nuclear war. It can make you feel like black humor.
If you were to describe the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, as a “war profiteer,” he would certainly laugh. More than six months ago only very few Germans knew him. Now that he is returning to his homeland, he is probably the best-known diplomat the Federal Republic has ever known. Melnyk will make it into many history books, often with the reference that he was “controversial”: some loved him for his clear words, others saw him as an undiplomatic nuisance.
Those who understand Putin have repeatedly called on Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to declare the Ukrainian persona non grata. The request came primarily from the ranks of the AfD and the left, whose base is united in their contempt for America and respect for Russia. The Marxist newspaper Junge Welt describes Melnyk as a “so-called ambassador” and “the Federal Republic’s top moral mullah for dealing with Ukrainian fascists”. It is surprising that ultra-leftists, otherwise keen to keep Islam at bay, compare the diplomats of a democratic country, of all things, with Muslim legal scholars, who admittedly sometimes live in the world of thought of the Middle Ages, in order to belittle him.
The dispute over Bandera
The same cannot be said of Melnyk, even though he did in fact stray from statements about the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera. The partisan leader, who was striving for a Ukrainian state, had temporarily cooperated with the Wehrmacht during World War II, was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and was later murdered by the KGB. The question is: venerable national hero or despicable fascist? Like many of his compatriots, the diplomat tends towards the first option.
Stepan Bandera was one of the most important leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which was founded in Vienna in 1929 and wanted to fight for an independent Ukrainian state. “The ideology of this organization was fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-Russian and anti-Polish,” says historian Franziska Davies in an interview with ntv.de. Militias close to Bandera participated in the extermination of the Jews during World War II and were responsible for the murder of 70,000 Poles in Volhynia in 1943 and 1944. Davies points out that Ukraine has only been coming to terms with its involvement in the Holocaust since the 1990s. Bandera is highly controversial in Ukraine.
“You’re right – Bandera needs to be re-examined,” Melnyk recently told Der Spiegel, showing exactly what his critics, especially those who admire Putin, are missing out on in large numbers: questioning their own stance. And even if, for understandable reasons, it is extremely difficult in Germany to show understanding for a fascist nationalist like Bandera, whose militias were involved in the persecution of the Jews, one should try not to automatically condemn Melnyk’s point of view: “It is not to be expected from us that we are soberly examining our past while in the present we are being snuffed out again by Russia.”
Baerbock let nonsensical demands to expel the country’s ambassador bounce off without comment – rightly so. Instead, the Greens politician bid farewell to Melnyk at state secretary level, an honor that not every diplomat is given. The ambassador deserves every conceivable appreciation, just like his 41 million compatriots, especially those who are literally fighting on the front line against the Russian army and – also for us Germans – defending European values. Melnyk played a large part in the fact that the Federal Republic of Germany delivered weapons to Ukraine and that Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not get through with his hesitant course.
Melnyk digs into open wounds
For more than seven years, Melnyk represented the interests of his compatriots in Germany. As is usual for ambassadors, he kept quiet for a long time, although he had long known what evil things Russia had been up to since the annexation of Crimea and how dangerous Putin is for Ukraine. He only became undiplomatic Rumpelstiltskin when Russia invaded his country. Here, too, it is above all the German Putin cronies in spirit who apply the standard to Melnyk that normally applies to the behavior of diplomats. “It’s good that he’s gone,” they now rejoice, actually revealing that they don’t care about Ukraine’s concerns and interests. Their motto is: Germany first. Then Russia. They don’t care about the rest of the world.
Such short-sightedness is alien to Melnyk. The Ukrainian thinks in international contexts. He used his analytical acumen, his obvious powers of observation and his knowledge of human nature to repeatedly hold the mirror in front of the Germans, especially politicians of all stripes, and at the same time to drill open wounds, not just what Scholz and his eternal armor ring exchange concerns.
An example from the recent past: When Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer rose to become the spokesman for all (!) East Germans and demanded acceptance “that we have a different position” on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Melnyk explained on Twitter what it was all about say: “It’s not ‘the East Germans’ who have a ‘different position’ on the war. It’s you, who has a different position on the mass murderer Putin & who presumes on October 3rd as the self-proclaimed advocate of wonderful people from East Germany to perform.”
Melnyk was right
As early as spring 2020, Melnyk described former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder “as a top lobbyist for Russia’s President Putin” – he was right. When Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier defended the construction of Nord Stream 2 in February 2021 as the “almost last bridge between Russia and Europe” and referred to Germany’s responsibility for the Second World War with more than 20 million deaths in and from the Soviet Union, the ambassador publicly complained about “the erroneous equation of Russia with the Soviet Union” because it “completely ignores the immeasurable suffering of other peoples of the USSR during the Nazi tyranny”. Melnyk was also right when assessing the gas pipeline.
After the war began, when the republic was discussing the engagement of Manuela Schwesig, SPD Prime Minister in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Schröder for Putin’s economic interests, Social Democrat Sören Bartol, State Secretary in the Ministry of Construction, tweeted: “I now find this ‘ambassador’ unbearable .” He later deleted the statement and apologized. In the meantime, the idea that Melnyk had every right in the world to be angry with Schwesig and Schröder was also gaining ground in the SPD.
In any case, soon the embassy could no longer complain that it was not being listened to in German top-level politics. He had a strong presence in the media. “Of course there are many statements that one regrets afterwards. We are all human beings,” said Melnyk at an event organized by the “Tagesspiegel” in Berlin. “This review will also come for me at some point where I will say: How could I have been so loud and rude since the beginning of the war?” He added: “I don’t regret what I did here in Germany.” There is no reason for that either. The opposite should be the case. Melnyk can be proud of what he did for his country in an exceptional situation.