"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."