“It Was a Misunderstanding,” Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Asman Publishes a Statement and Video with Korchynsky After the Scandal Around “Bratstvo” and the Israeli Embassy in Ukraine.

There are stories that should never be treated casually in Israel.

Anything connected to Nazi symbols, Nazi slogans, or Nazi gestures belongs to that category. For Jews, for Israelis, for the families of Holocaust survivors, and for every society that still understands what the twentieth century taught us, this is not a matter of political taste. It is a red line.

That is exactly why the recent scandal around an alleged “Nazi salute” on Kyiv’s Maidan should be examined very carefully.

Not emotionally. Not automatically. Not through the lens of Russian propaganda. And not through viral fragments detached from context.

On June 29, 2026, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Asman published a statement and a video with Ukrainian public figure Dmytro Korchynsky after the controversy around “Bratstvo” and the statement by the Embassy of Israel in Ukraine.

The story began after claims that a video allegedly showed participants of “Bratstvo” shouting Nazi slogans and demonstrating Nazi gestures during a protest on June 21 on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv. The Israeli Embassy reacted. The issue immediately became more than a local Ukrainian dispute. It became a sensitive matter for Israel, Ukraine, and the Jewish community.

But then Rabbi Asman said something very important: he did not rush to conclusions.

He met with Dmytro Korchynsky directly.

And after that meeting, he published a statement saying that the video circulating on social media had, according to his information, no connection to the June 21 protest.

In his words, translated into English:

“After the statement by the Embassy of Israel regarding the video allegedly filmed during the protest on June 21, where alleged participants of ‘Bratstvo’ shouted Nazi slogans and demonstrated Nazi gestures, we did not make hasty conclusions and decided to meet with Dmytro Korchynsky directly.”

Then came the key point:

“The video that was circulated on social media has nothing to do with the above-mentioned event. It was filmed much earlier.”

Rabbi Asman also wrote that, according to the information available to him, the people in the video were not members of “Bratstvo” or other Ukrainian patriotic organizations.

“We are talking about underage provocateurs who, probably, could have been used by Russian special services interested in such provocations, having paid them money.”

This sentence matters.

Because if the video was not connected to the protest, if the people in........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)