Israel condemned Ukraine on Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky attended the state reburial of Ukrainian nationalist leader Andriy Melnyk in Kyiv, honoring a figure whose movement collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

“We regret the decision to hold an official state reburial ceremony for OUN leader Andriy Melnyk, who collaborated with the Nazis,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said. “There is no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”

Melnyk and his wife, Sofia, were reburied at Ukraine’s National Military Memorial Cemetery after their remains were transferred from Luxembourg. The ceremony was attended by Zelensky and senior Ukrainian officials as part of a broader Ukrainian effort to return the remains of nationalist figures buried abroad.

Zelensky described the ceremony as symbolic for modern Ukraine and praised what he called “Ukrainian heroes” from past and present generations. He said Melnyk had returned “to a Ukraine that will not falter.”

Melnyk led a faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, known as the OUN, which fought Soviet and Polish control over Ukrainian territory. Parts of the movement also cooperated with Nazi Germany during the war, and the OUN remains deeply controversial because of its connection to violence against Jews and Poles during the Holocaust era.

Yad Vashem also issued a sharp condemnation following the ceremony, warning that honoring Melnyk undermines Holocaust remembrance.

“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 said. “Yad Vashem is deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”

The ceremony reopened a long-running dispute between Israel and Ukraine over Kyiv’s honoring of wartime nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration and antisemitism. Ukraine has not yet publicly responded to the latest Israeli criticism.