Ukraine did not wake up one morning and decide to stage a provocation against Israel.

It did something much deeper, older, and more painful: it began returning its dead home.

On May 25, 2026, Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, were reburied at Ukraine’s National Military Memorial Cemetery in the Kyiv region. Their remains had been brought back from Luxembourg, where Melnyk had been buried after his death in 1964.

For Ukraine, this was part of a state process of building a national military pantheon — a place for those who defended Ukrainian independence, sovereignty, and statehood across different generations. This is not only about today’s war. It is also about the long Ukrainian struggle of the twentieth century, about those who fought when Ukraine had no state, no security guarantees, no diplomatic protection, and often no one willing to hear its case.

For Israel, however, the ceremony triggered a sharp reaction.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed regret over the official state reburial of Melnyk. Yad Vashem also criticized the ceremony. In Israel, Melnyk’s name was read through the prism of the OUN, World War II, the Holocaust, and the painful memory of Nazi collaborators.

That reaction became the reason for this article.

Not because Israel has no right to historical sensitivity. It does.

Not because Jewish memory should be dismissed. It must never be dismissed.

But because Ukrainian history cannot be reduced to Soviet formulas, Russian propaganda frames, or one-word labels that erase decades of struggle, exile, imprisonment, state-building, and anti-Soviet resistance.

Andriy Melnyk was not a cartoon villain from a Soviet textbook.

He was a Ukrainian military and political figure, a colonel of the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, an officer of the Sich Riflemen, a leader of the Melnyk wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and, in today’s Ukraine, a national hero connected to the long fight for Ukrainian independence.

His biography is not simple.

But it is also not a slogan.

Melnyk was born on December 12, 1890, in Volia Yakubova near Drohobych, then part of Austria-Hungary. During World War I, he joined the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. In 1914–1916, he commanded a company on the Austro-Russian front. In 1916, he was captured by the Russians and held near Tsaritsyn. On January 6, 1917, he escaped captivity and eventually reached Kyiv.

After 1917, Melnyk became part of the Ukrainian struggle for statehood. He was connected with Yevhen Konovalets and the Sich Riflemen, served in........

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