Netanyahu after meeting Ukraine leader: Countries’ ties entering ‘new era’

Israeli-Ukranian ties have entered a “new era,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday after meeting Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

Netanyahu’s comments comes less than three years after Israel decided to cancel a scheduled visit by Groysman because of Kiev’s vote against Israel in a US-enabled Security Council resolution harshly condemning Israel and the settlements in December 2016.

In a 28-minute Facebook campaign clip, Netanyahu – who completes his two-day Ukrainian trip in the afternoon – called his trip “historic” and said that there were many achievements. This was the first prime ministerial trip to the country since 1999.

Among the trip’s achievements, Netanyahu said, were a decision by Ukraine to open a high-tech office in Jerusalem, which he said he hopes “will be the first step toward opening an embassy.”

He also said that the two countries agreed jointly on a tourism project in Uman, where tens of thousands of Israelis visit to pray at the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. This project, Netanyahu said, will make visits there easier.

And the most important thing, he said, was a personal obligation he received from President Volodymyr Zelensky to push forward in parliament a law that will enable Ukrainian-born Israelis who immigrated to Israel after Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 to receive government-pensions.

The Ukrainian government has already approved that measure, but it now has to be passed through the parliament, and Zelensky, according to Netanyahu, said that he felt it was the country’s “moral obligation” to do so.

This issue is of importance to some 8,000 Ukrainian immigrants in Israel, and receiving a promise on this matter is the main reason that that Netanyahu’s political opponents have said he went to Ukraine in the first place just a month before the elections.

 Netanyahu dismissed that notion, saying that he agreed to come to Kiev in the late summer after congratulating Zelensky in an April telephone call for his election victory. This was also after the Israeli elections, Netanayhu said, and he had no idea the country would be returning to the polls so quickly.

Netanyahu and Groysman attended an innovation event with high-tech entrepreneurs and local industry official in Kiev Tuesday morning where Groysman thanked Netanyahu for Israel’s assistance in establishing a high-tech innovation ecosystem in Ukraine.

    Israel and Ukraine signed a Free Trade Agreement earlier in January, and Netyanyahu said that deal – along with stronger economic ties between the two countries – will “serve our two peoples well.”