The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was compelled on Sunday by an Appeals Court to reinstate Nazi-sympathizing diplomat Vasily Marushchinets, who was fired for racist incitement and anti-Semitism.
Marushchinets was removed from his position at the foreign ministry in May 2018 after Ukrainian investigative journalist and blogger Anatoly Shariy exposed on his YouTube channel various hateful and offensive posts shared by the diplomat on his Facebook page.
After studying the materials published by Shariy, the disciplinary commission of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine admitted that Marushchinets had violated the oath of a civil servant and that his actions harm the credibility of public servants.
“Lord, punish the Jews”, “The Jewish pigs declared war on Germany in 1934”, “Jews are sh*t” are only some of the inflammatory posts published by Marushchinets while serving at the Ukraine Consulate in Hamburg, Germany.
In other previous social media posts, Marushchinets had also been depicted giving a Hitler salute while giving a speech and holding a cake with the words "Mein Kampf", referring to Nazi mass-murderer Adolf Hitler's 1925 autobiographical manifesto.
Marushchinets is an ardent Holocaust denier and had claimed in the past that the Jews of Kyiv were not mass murdered by the tens of thousands by the Nazis at the Babi Yar Massacre in 1941.
The former diplomat appealed his dismissal at the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal in Kyiv, which ruled in his favor and ordered the ministry to reinstate him with back pay, which totals at more than 218,000 hryvnias (about 9,300 US dollars).
3 View gallery
Memorial service for the Jewish victims at Babi Yar, Kyiv
(Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
The court's decision will now be appealed by the government to the Ukraine Supreme Court.
Israel's ambassador to Kyiv Rabbi Joel Lion said the court's decision to reinstate the anti-Semitic diplomat was baffling.
"We are hopeful the Ukraine Supreme Court will see the true face of this dangerous man," Ambassador Lion said.