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Israeli ambassador to Ukraine – You want our help but vote against us in the UN

A full 90% of the time, Kyiv supports anti-Israel resolutions in the world body, Amb. Michael Brodsky told a local news site.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine criticized the country constantly asking for Israel’s help in its fight against an ongoing Russian invasion for not providing Jerusalem with any kind of quid pro quo in the United Nations.

In an interview with the local ZN.UA news site, Ambassador Michael Brodsky said that Kyiv “supports 90% of the anti-Israel resolutions in the UN.” This, he said, “is unusual, considering Kyiv often turns to the Israeli authorities for various requests. If Ukraine sees Israel as a friendly nation and makes requests from it, then it needs to support us in the matters that are important to us just as Israel works with Ukraine on matters important to it.”

In just one example, Ukraine voted for a Palestinian-backed draft resolution in November that denied Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and called for an International Criminal Court advisory opinion on Israel’s settlement activities in Judea and Samaria. After the Foreign Ministry called in Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk to protest, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s personal aide said it had been a “grave mistake” and that Kyiv “must at least abstain from such votes.”

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Ukraine abstained in the subsequent voted by the full UN General Assembly’s subsequent vote on the issue, which passed easily.

Israel has airlifted hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, sent a field hospital for several weeks in the early stages of the war, trains Ukrainian trauma specialists, and treats dozens of wounded Ukrainian soldiers, and has backed Ukraine in many votes in the world body.

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen also said in May that Israel is helping Ukraine clear mines from territory its forces have liberated from Russian control.

When Israel doesn’t back Ukraine, Brodsky noted, this is only because Israel has its own security interests to cover, he told the site.

Russia is a key player in Syria, and it is vital that the IDF continue to have its mutual deconfliction mechanism in place so that it can continue to attack military sites belonging to Iran or its proxies in the country without endangering Moscow’s forces or its own during its airstrikes.

Brodsky noted that Israel also sent an early-warning system to Kyiv, and that “specialists from Israel and Ukraine meet, work, and actively do everything to make this system work here as quickly as possible.”

The system can identify where rockets or missiles will fall and calculate how much time residents have to flee to safety.

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Korniychuk announced in May that the system had begun operations and “hopefully” his countrymen will be able to “copy-paste it to all major cities,” he said.

Brodsky has criticized anti-Israel remarks made by his host country before, and Israel has summoned Ambassador Korniychuk for a dressing-down more than once for statements made by his government that have accused Israel of “immorality” and worse in supposedly supporting Russia, such as by failing to impose Western-style sanctions on Moscow due to its aggression, or refusing to supply Kyiv with the military equipment it wants.

The last time it did so was less than two weeks ago, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that one reason why Israel will not provide weapons to Ukraine is the fear that those assets could fall into Iranian hands.