Ukraine to open official high-tech and investment office in Jerusalem - The Jerusalem Post

Volodymyr Zelensky. (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Ukraine will open a high tech and investment center in Jerusalem, Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Kiev.

In opening an official office in Jerusalem, Ukraine is following the example of the Czech Republic and Australia which have opened official offices in Jerusalem, but kept their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Zelensky, who is Jewish, said that Ukraine has “something to learn from Israel, especially in security and defense, and we will of course be doing that.”

Netanyahu is in Kiev for a two-day trip that political opponents charge has little more than a photo-opportunity before the elections in an attempt to siphon Russian-speaking immigrants away from Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party.

The visit began Monday morning with a visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a monument to the Holodomor – the man-made famine in the Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933 that killed millions.

After a lunch meeting at the Presidential Palace, the two leaders are scheduled to visit Babi Yar for a memorial ceremony at the site where some 34,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators in September, 1941.

Netanyahu is scheduled to return to Israel on Tuesday.