History Haunts Ukraine’s Undiplomatic Voice in Berlin

BERLIN — It was as if Ukraine’s ambassador in Germany was vying for the title of most undiplomatic diplomat: Decided to spur Berlin into extra pressing help for his embattled nation, he mocked the chancellor, instructed a former lawmaker to “shut your lure,” and posted memes on Twitter likening Germany’s lagging weapons deliveries to a snail with a bullet taped to its again.

But it was not the controversies of the current that ended Andriy Melnyk’s profession in Berlin. As an alternative, it was a thorny query concerning the previous.

Ukraine dismissed Mr. Melnyk final weekend after in interview through which he defended a nationalist Ukrainian chief who collaborated with the Nazis, and whose followers took half in massacres of Jews and Poles.

The controversy over Mr. Melnyk’s feedback has stirred questions over how Germans and Ukrainians see a darkish chapter of their shared historical past. Maybe extra vital, it has uncovered how diverging views of that historical past nonetheless form one of many tensest European partnerships towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Two weeks in the past, on the German YouTube program “Jung & Naiv,” Mr. Melnyk was challenged on his choice a number of years in the past to put flowers on the grave of Stepan Bandera, the chief of the Group of Ukrainian Nationalists. Bandera, the journalist famous, held antisemitic, fascist views that in the end spurred his independence fighters to collaborate with the Nazis.

“I’m towards blaming all crimes on Bandera,” Mr. Melnyk stated. “There isn’t a proof that Bandera’s troops murdered lots of of hundreds of Jews,” he stated, contradicting an evaluation shared by most historians. “These are narratives that the Russians are pushing to today, which discover help in Germany, Poland and in addition in Israel.”

His feedback provoked outrage amongst a few of Ukraine’s most crucial allies.

In Poland, the place Bandera and his group are remembered for massacring tens of hundreds of Poles, not solely did a overseas ministry deputy name the feedback “completely unacceptable,” however President Andrzej Duda used the commemoration of 1 such bloodbath on Monday to insist that the reality concerning the wartime massacres between 1942 and 1945 needed to be “firmly and clearly said.”

“Let this fact actually function a basis,” for brand spanking new relations, he stated. “It was not about and isn’t about revenge, about any retaliation. There isn’t a higher proof of this than the time we’ve got now,” he added, referring to the robust ties the international locations have constructed within the face of Russia’s invasion.

In Germany, the place acknowledging crimes of the Nazi previous is seen as a type of nationwide obligation, outrage unfold shortly throughout social media. Even politicians who had as soon as supported Mr. Melnyk distanced themselves.

However to many Ukrainians, Mr. Melnyk’s views are uncontroversial: Bandera — who was assassinated in Munich by Soviet brokers — is seen as an anti-Soviet freedom fighter who made tough compromises within the battle for independence. They deny his Nazi collaboration by declaring that Germany later interned him in a focus camp over his independence efforts.

Notably in Bandera’s native west, statues are erected in his honor; streets are named after him. In Lviv, shops promote Bandera-themed T-shirts and socks.

President Vladimir V. Putin has dredged up such nationalist figures to bolster his declare that Russia is “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. In speeches, he has known as Ukrainians combating Russia “Banderites.”

Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, a Polish historian in Berlin, stated that Ukraine “eventually must cope with Bandera.”

A part of the explanation Bandera remained so outstanding, he stated, was that even main intellectuals refused to rethink the historical past. “They don’t actually wish to open Ukrainian historical past to the historical past of the Holocaust, the historical past of fascism,” he stated. “So long as they keep away from and postpone, then different individuals will instrumentalize this historical past — like Putin.”

Nonetheless, the controversy round Bandera’s legacy in Ukraine is advanced. Youthful historians and people from Ukraine’s middle and east, the place many households fought within the Soviet Union’s Crimson Military, are extra inclined to view Bandera critically, stated Mr. Rossolinski-Liebe.

In 2019, President Volodymyr Zelensky, who’s Jewish and the grandson of a Crimson Military veteran, fired Volodymyr Viatrovych, a historian who labored to rehabilitate Bandera and different nationalists, as head of the Ukrainian Institute of Nationwide Reminiscence.

Franziska Davies, a historian of Japanese Europe at Ludwig Maximilian College in Munich, stated that whereas Mr. Melnyk’s feedback have been “merely false,” the “excessive focus” on him was not solely due to the ambassador’s provocative fashion.

“It additionally has one thing to do with this German stereotype of Ukraine — as a particularly nationalist nation, as a rustic the place historical past is misrepresented,” she stated. “There’s a really colonialist discourse on Ukraine in Germany.”

For a lot of, Mr. Melnyk got here to embody Ukraine’s frustration with Berlin — not solely about sluggish supply of weapons, however about its many years of financial ties with Moscow, together with a contested gasoline pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which Ukrainians thought-about a Russian effort to economically strangle their nation by depriving it of transit charges.

In current months, Mr. Melnyk has accused Germany’s largely ceremonial president, the previous overseas minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, of weaving a “spider’s internet” of contacts with Russia. Mr. Steinmeier, as soon as shut with Moscow’s overseas minister, Sergey Lavrov, had lengthy promoted Nord Stream 2, for which he apologized after the invasion.

When Mr. Steinmeier was abruptly uninvited from a go to to Kyiv earlier this yr, Chancellor Olaf Scholz in flip refused for months to go to. Mr. Melnyk then known as him an “insulted liverwurst” — a German expression that, loosely, means somebody who’s appearing like a prima donna.

Mr. Melnyk turned a favourite visitor on the German discuss present circuit, the place he delivered outlandish remarks that outraged the German elite whereas delighting these pushing extra strong help for Ukraine.

“I don’t get pleasure from scary. I’m nonetheless a diplomat — I’m not a politician. I’m not an ‘enfant horrible,’” Mr. Melnyk instructed The New York Occasions. “Most individuals say, ‘Nicely, he turned loopy due to the struggle, and emotional.’ That’s not so.”

German officers have been at all times well mannered, however usually dismissive of his non-public pleas for help, he stated.

“The purpose is you might be desperately making an attempt to elucidate that Ukraine’s scenario is way more critical, and also you don’t see any response from Berlin. That’s one thing that possibly modified my method, nevertheless it was not a aware choice. It was a intestine feeling, a type of experimenting, making an attempt to see: How can I wake Germany up?”

He additionally inadvertently uncovered a generally condescending method Germans took to Ukrainians. Throughout one discuss present look, a German historian scolding Mr. Melnyk argued Germany’s conciliatory angle towards Russia was formed by expertise of struggle — ignoring or forgetting that Ukrainians witnessed among the bloodiest chapters of World Struggle II, and have been mired in struggle once more.

Susan Neiman, an American thinker and cultural commentator in Berlin, stated a part of the explanation such disputes trigger a lot outrage is due to how tied up World Struggle II has turn out to be in Western societies’ sense of morality.

“If there’s one consensus the Western world has at this second in time, it’s that in order for you a case of absolute evil, or ‘the great battle,’ it’s World Struggle II,” she stated. “Individuals like what they suppose are clear classes from historical past.”

The controversy round Mr. Melnyk’s feedback uncovered divisions within the classes drawn from World Struggle II.

“By no means once more” is the frequent chorus for all, however for very totally different causes, stated Irit Dekel, who researches political reminiscence on the College of Indiana-Bloomington. “For Germany, it’s ‘by no means once more struggle,’ ‘by no means once more to the Holocaust,’” she stated. “For the Russian half, and its propaganda, it has been: ‘By no means once more Nazis.’”

However for Japanese Europeans, “An important lesson of World Struggle II was that you must battle the aggressor,” stated Ms. Davies. “That’s what they see they should do now: Putin is the aggressor, we should battle it.”

The sense amongst Japanese Europeans of their shared will to battle is why it was not Germany or Israel’s condemnation of Mr. Melnyk’s phrases, however Poland’s, that spurred Ukraine’s overseas ministry to distance itself from him. Stressing its gratitude to Poland, Kyiv known as for “unity within the face of shared challenges.”

Mr. Melnyk now acknowledges that he went too far in his feedback.

“The difficulty of Bandera is one thing we Ukrainians should work on. We simply want extra time,” he stated, arguing that Ukraine’s fraught postwar historical past, from Soviet occupation to immediately’s struggle, have provided little room to critically look at its historical past.

However his feedback, he stated, replicate a frustration Ukrainians nonetheless have with how they’re seen by Germans: “That may be a place that many Ukrainians share, however few dare to talk.”