Ezgi Guyildar asked Andrey Melnik why his son is studying in Berlin instead of fighting for his country
Andrey Melnik looks on prior to an official welcoming ceremony for Ukraine’s Prime minister in the courtyard of the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, September 4, 2022 © Jens Schlueter
Ukraine’s outgoing ambassador to Berlin, Andrey Melnik, has called a left-wing German politician “inhuman,” “pro-Putin,” and “heartless” this weekend.
Ezgi Guyildar, a member of Die Linke (The Left), had questioned why Melnik’s son is studying in Berlin rather than fighting for his country.
Guyildar has bitterly opposed her country’s arming of Ukraine and sanctioning of Russia, both of which Melnik has aggressively championed.
“Why is Melink’s son actually studying in Berlin and not fighting for his country in Ukraine and our freedom?” she asked on Twitter on Saturday. Her reference to “our freedom” was likely laced with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Melnik replied with a tirade of abuse. Tagging Guyildar’s party, the ambassador asked “how low can this pro-Putin, Stalinist, inhuman, heartless, horrible party morally sink?”
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“Good luck in tomorrow’s state elections in Lower Saxony, you unscrupulous,” he continued, signing off: “mind yourself, left-dirt.”
When the election results came in on Sunday, Melnik gloated as Die Linke received half as many votes as in 2017. “Good luck in insignificance,” the Ukrainian diplomat jeered at party leader Janine Wissler.
Melnik did not address why his son is not fighting in Ukraine, despite the diplomat’s repeated insistence that Germans bankroll Kiev’s military. However, it is likely that the student has been deemed eligible to avoid service. While Kiev declared martial law and banned males aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country from late February, exemptions are granted to “graduate students and doctoral students studying abroad in full-time or dual forms of education.”
Melnik has repeatedly insulted his German hosts in recent months, and has ridiculed anyone suggesting a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine. When former Chancellor Angela Merkel declared last month that any future European security arrangement must “also include Russia,” Melnik accused her of holding a “borderline obsession” with Russia.
The outgoing ambassador’s comments on Merkel were the latest in a long line of scandals and controversies, including commemorating Nazi-collaborating war criminals, telling German academics to “go to hell,” and offending Israel and Poland with Holocaust revisionism.