The defaced statue of late Yiddish author and playwright Sholom Aleichem. Photo: Twitter.

A statue of the late Yiddish author and playwright Sholem Aleichem in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was discovered on Monday to have been defaced with red-painted swastikas.

Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister, Vadym Prystaiko, called the act of vandalism “disgusting” and “appalling.”

Police opened a criminal probe of the “violation of equality of citizens upon their race, nationality or religious beliefs,” which carries a potential five-year prison sentence.

The statue is located in downtown Kyiv, on Rohnydinska Street, near the Brodsky Choral Synagogue.

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Aleichem was best known for penning the “Tevye the Dairyman” series of short stories — upon which the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” was based — providing a glimpse of Jewish shtetl life in Tsarist Russia.

He lived in Kyiv from 1903 to 1905, before he was driven from the city by anti-Jewish pogroms. He subsequently moved to New York City, where he died in 1916 at the age of 57 and is buried.