On the night of September 23, 2014, unknown vandals desecrated the Menorah - a memorial to the Jews who were murdered in the Babiy Yar in Kyiv. The act of vandalism was committed the day before Rosh-ha-Shana, the Jewish new year, and the anniversary of mass shootings of Jews in the Babiy Yar.

The Government Representative for Ethno-National Policy asseses this shameful desecration of the memory of victims of Nazism to be a conscious provocation, aimed to support the notion of a “strenghtening” of anti-Semitic and xenophobic tendencies in Ukrainian society.

We state with full responsibility that the Ukrainian people - citizens of Ukraine of all nationalities - are now uniting to defend their homeland and to renew their country. All of the attempts of the old regime, toppled by the Revolution of Dignity, to create anti-Semitic provocations and thus discredit the Maidan have failed. And it was the Jewish community that played a key part in exposing both the masterminds and the actual perpetrators of these acts of infamy. It is doubtless that all other attempts to besmirch Ukraine’s name through the work of vagabonds ready to desecrate our holy grounds will also fail.

Today we are united like never before: undisguised Russian aggression and economic challenges, an ever-strengthening confidence that we will prevail, the heroism of thousands of Ukrainian sons and daughters are creating the Ukrainian political nation before our very eyes - a nation which is based in common citizenship and not in ethnicity, language, or cultural preferences.

I wish to warn all those who took part in the shameful provocation at the Babiy Yar: attempts to depict Ukrainians as xenophobes and anti-Semites in the eyes of the global community have no chance to succeed. Xenophobia and anti-Semitism are and will remain alien to Ukrainian society. Ukraine will always be home to representatives of all nationalities who consider her to be their homeland.

Gennadiy Druzenko, Ukrainian Government Representative for Ethno-National Policy