The newly-opened symbolic synagogue at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial. Photo: Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center

i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Thursday visited Kyiv’s nearby town of Bucha, which became known for mass killings of civilians under the Russian occupation.

The minister who arrived in Ukraine earlier this morning to meet with his counterpart Dmity Kuleba and the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, visited the houses of Jewish residents of Bucha. They told Cohen about the hardships of the war they had endured in the last 12 months since the start of the Russian invasion last February.

“I visited Bucha, one of the suburbs of Kyiv that was badly damaged at the beginning of the war. It is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of the harsh sights and horror stories that I have heard and been exposed to here. Israel condemns any intentional harm to the innocent,” said the minister.

The minister then went to Babyn Yar, one of the most known sites of mass killings of Soviet Jews by Nazis. There Cohen said a prayer together with the members of the Jewish community and lay flowers to the memorial of the Holocaust victims.

“We stand today in this painful place, where more than 30 thousand Jews were murdered in a process that preceded the terrible final solution that led to the extinction of more than one and a half million Jews in the territories of the former Soviet Union,” he said at the commemoration site.

“Standing here today as a Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel and a representative of the government of Israel, I can guarantee that we will do everything to protect our people and provide them with security against those who sow evil against them,” Cohen vowed.