Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan was added this week to the blacklist of the Ukrainian website Myrotvorets, which compiles individuals and entities that Kyiv accuses of cooperating with Russia. The site is run by an independent organization but maintains close ties to senior Ukrainian government officials and security services.
Regarding the reasons for Dayan’s inclusion, the site claimed he was “conducting deliberate and systematic activity aimed at inciting interethnic and interstate hatred between Israel and Ukraine.” It also accused him of spreading “Russian-fascist propaganda narratives contrary to known historical facts.”
Placement on the blacklist carries no immediate practical consequences. However, according to sources familiar with the matter, it serves as a warning that Ukrainian authorities have “marked” the individual as an enemy and could take concrete measures against them in the future. Various Ukrainian media outlets have reported that information published on the site may be used by authorities to open formal investigations.
Dayan was added to the list days after criticizing Ukraine’s reburial of Andriy Melnyk, who led the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) organization, which promoted a fascist nationalist ideology. During World War II, Melnyk fought alongside the Nazis against the Soviet army and participated in the persecution and murder of Jews.
Melnyk died in exile in Western Europe in 1964 and was buried in Luxembourg. For years, Ukrainian governments refrained from granting him the status of a national hero, partly because of his involvement in the murder of Jews. That policy has now changed. This week, Melnyk’s remains were reburied in Ukraine in an official ceremony attended by Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky wrote on X: “Colonel Andriy Melnyk returned to a different Ukraine – not the one he had been forced to leave, but the one he had dreamed of. He dreamed of it – as did thousands of other such significant Ukrainian figures. I thank all those who are truly doing their best to ensure that our Ukrainian national memory remains a living memory. I am grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
Dayan addressed the reburial on X this week, writing: “The reinterment of Andriy Melnyk for a state burial in Ukraine raises serious concerns. Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance. Yad Vashem is deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”