Germany loses its currently most impertinent tormentor: The replacement of the Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk is imminent. And even if the government in Kyiv speaks of an intended promotion: Melnyk has earned his dismissal.
The truth about the apparently imminent withdrawal of the Ukrainian ambassador Andriy Melnyk will not be known for the time being. But three things indicate that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made this decision: two sources plus plausibility.
The Ukraine war reporter from “Bild” spread the first message. No one has better sources in Ukraine’s presidential palace and government than Paul Ronzheimer, for a reason: the reporter is an intrepid sleuth, and he’s dedicated to the Ukrainian cause. The second message spread the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
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The plausibility of the message is that, first of all, there is no denial, neither from the Ukrainian government nor from the presidential palace, nor from the ambassador himself or the embassy. And secondly, the government has good reasons to withdraw Melnyk from Germany.
Quite simply: if Melnyk as ambassador to Germany were to do more good than harm to Ukraine, she would stick with him. But the equation is no longer correct, because Andrij Melnyk has overstretched the curve. This is not an opinion, by the way, but a fact. If it were otherwise, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry would not have distanced itself from its own ambassador.
The Secretary of State is the head of an ambassador. Such distancing is a yellow, if not red, card. The reason is simple: an ambassador who is called to order by his own government loses his credit. And that’s the only thing he has.
An ambassador who can no longer be sure of having the backing of his own government can no longer be an ambassador. Because the government to which he puts his concerns will always ask him: Dear Mr. Melnyk, do you have the backing of your foreign minister for what you are saying here?
The moment when Melnyk lost the backing of his own government is clear: it happened immediately after the ambassador’s declaration of loyalty to Stepan Bandera, whom Melnyk sees as a freedom fighter. Others see Bandera as a more than dubious historical figure, an anti-Semite, Hitler collaborator and responsible for the mass murders of Poles and Jews.
Melnyk has denied there is any evidence of Bandera’s involvement. However, Bandera was the head of the Ukrainian OUN, a partisan organization that, from its founding in 1929, used every means to create an independent Ukrainian state. After Hitler broke the 1939 pact with Stalin and began invading the Soviet Union in 1941, Banderas OUN saw the chief Nazi as a potential ally against Moscow’s Bolsheviks.
History aside, it is not Melnyk’s opinion of Bandera that is crucial to Melnyk and the apparent decision of the Kyiv government to order him home. But that he expressed them publicly and thus forced his own government to justify himself. Which is certainly not one of the duties of an ambassador.
Its job is the complete opposite: reducing international tensions, even with language that obscures any conflict or downgrades it to a stupid misunderstanding. Melnyk clearly failed to do this. In other words, the ambassador did not do his job. He was unprofessional.
An educated and historically knowledgeable man, Melnyk can be expected to know what he does with words. That’s why they end up becoming diplomats. What Melnyk was doing to Bandera with his words is perfectly clear: he was upsetting the Polish government. One can understand their excitement: Bandera’s people were, historically undeniable, involved in the mass murder not only of Jews but also of Poles by German Nazis as collaborators.
When Melnyk publicly claimed in an interview that there was no “evidence” for Bandera’s actions, one can easily imagine how that would be received in the Polish government, especially since it is a national administration. But here, too, what matters is not Melnyk’s personal opinion, but the fact that Poland is the biggest supporter of Ukraine in all of Europe.
No other European country has shipped as many arms to Ukraine, and few countries have a remarkable 100 percent promise-to-delivery ratio. (The German quota is 35 percent, which explains Poland’s distrust of Germans.) And that’s not all: no other European country has taken in as many Ukrainian refugees as Poland.
Against the background of these facts, it is foolish, at least unprofessional, to sow doubts about the historically unequivocally documented murder of countless Poles in the turmoil of the war, as Melnyk did. Melnyk, following his personal convictions and probably also his temperament, broke an old folk rule: You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.
That was probably the moment when, from the point of view of the Ukrainian government, Andriy Melnyk’s damage outweighed his benefit.
The fact that one then speaks of great satisfaction in such cases is also known in this country from almost every job reference. And the fact that there are rumors in Kyiv that Melnyk should be promoted shows above all that the Ukrainian government has mastered its diplomatic craft.
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