A man was filmed shouting an antisemitic phrase as he toppled a giant communal menorah that was installed in the Ukrainian city of Kyiv ahead of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
“Ukrainians, we are a force. The Jews to the grave,” shouted the man named by the Jewish community as known antisemitic activist Andriy Rachkov.
I want to “show everyone how to treat foreigners who are occupying and taking over the country,” the man shouted at the start of the video of the incident which circulated on social media.
Ynet news site said that Rachov had himself initially published the video, which was later taken down by technology companies.
Representatives of the Jewish community have reportedly asked Ukrainian police to investigate the incident as a hate crime, saying that Rachkov returned a day later to try to knock over the menorah for a second time, but was unable to as it had been welded to the ground in the interim.
At the start of the year, a Jewish organization in Ukraine said the number of antisemitic incidents dropped by 27 percent from 2018 to 2019. However, the figures were disputed by other Jewish organizations.
