Ukraine does not only promise equal rights to all nations within it, but it also promises its protection to the preservation of ethnicities, cultures… - Leonid Kravchuk

Ukraine does not need nuclear arms. It is our misfortune that they are located on our soil. And though we would most heartily wish they were not there, the reality is that they are. We did not put them there, but they are tied to Ukraine, they influence our politics. To get rid of them is not so simple. These are not tanks, which can be cut up without any problems. There is an entire complex here, a living organism that must be stopped. We face three problems: safety, compensation and the environment.

Ukraine must be reckoned with as a state and not viewed as a part of Russia. One simple thing must be understood: Ukraine will not do as is ordered by others, be this Russia or any other government. It will do what is in the interests of its people, just as any normal country. I would like to find solutions that will accommodate both Ukraine and other countries. I think these exist. They are not so complicated, we require only good will.

The trip from Kyiv to Jerusalem was short, but the path to Ukrainian independence, which allowed for the visit of a Ukrainian President to Israel, was long and hard. In Israel it is said sometimes "for the first time in a thousand years". This expression also applies to our circumstances. For the first time, an official Ukrainian delegation is visiting Israel. The fates of the two nations share much in common. For many generations the possibility of establishing an independent nation was denied from both of them. Both of them experienced forced assimilation, were scattered in many other nations in the world, suffered troubles in the 20th century, for example the "artificial hunger" of 1933, oppression at the hands of the Stalin regime, World War Two; troubles whose scope allow a comparison with the Jewish Holocaust.