On 24 January 2008 a group of 4 persons beat Rabbi Dov-Ber Baitman, a teacher at the Jewish educational center Shiurey Torah in Dnepropetrovsk, when he walked out of the central Golden Rose synagogue after evening classes. The attackers also shouted antisemitic insults. In March 2008 it was announced that the attackers were caught.

 

On 23 May 2008 Dmitro Groisman, a Jewish human rights activist, was beaten near his apartment building in Vinnitsa.

 

On 3 March 2008 swastikas were painted at the 18th century burial site of Rabbi Levi Itzhak and on other gravestones at the Jewish cemetery in Berdichev. On 12 March 2008 the police arrested a 21-year-old suspect, who is a leader on a local skinhead group. He was released after 3 days, but not allowed to leave the area, came to the local synagogue and promised to pay for the damage. In June 2008 he was sentenced to a year and a half imprisonment for desecration of graves.

 

During the night of 15 April 2008, the memorial to Rabbi Aaron at the Jewish cemetery in Zhitomir was set on fire. The perpetrators also painted swastikas, "Satan is come" and other antisemitic and satanic graffiti. The same grave was desecrated in November 2007. Local Jewish leaders called the police to put an end to the repeating antisemitic incidents and the European Jewish Congress condemned the incident. A week after the incident, the police claimed that three teenagers were playing soccer near the cemetery and lit a fire there in order to warm up. The fire got out of control and burned down the memorial. The police did not mention the graffiti.

 

On 24 April 2008 it was discovered that 11 gravestones were broken at the Jewish cemetery in Bolgrad, in the Odessa region.

 

In June 2008 tourists from France discovered a Star of David on gallows on a memorial plaque at the Kleparov train station in Lvov. The plaque marks the place from where the Nazis shipped 500,000 Jews to the Belzec death camps in Poland during 1941-1943.

 

On 14 July 2008, for the 5th time in a year, a Holocaust memorial and the "Mourning Mother" memorial, located on a mass grave in Poltava, were desecrated with paint, Ukrainian national symbols and racist and antisemitic graffiti, including a Star of David on gallows and "Death to the Jews". The Holocaust memorial is dedicated to more than 3000 local Jews who were murdered by the Nazis on 23 November 1941. The other memorial is in honor of about 5000 Red Army prisoners of war and partisans murdered during World War II in the region.

 

On 7 August 2008 swastikas and "Long live the Nazis" were discovered on a memorial to Holocaust victims of the Janovska concentration camp near Lvov.

 

In late January 2008 swastikas, "Achtung Jude", "Hitler" and other insults were discovered on the building and fence of the Jewish charity organization Khesed in Krivoy Rog.

 

On 19 January 2008 stones were thrown at a building which houses a synagogue and Jewish Chabad school in Kiev. Several windows were broken.

 

On the night of 25 January 2008 a man attempting to paint antisemitic graffiti on the main synagogue in Kiev was caught by police and told them that he was promised payment for painting the graffiti.

 

 

 

In June 2008 a swastika and "Yids and Churki go away from Crimea" were painted on the wall of a building in Feodosia (Crimea) where the local Jewish charity organization "Yakhad" is located. "Churki" is a derogatory name for Caucasians.

 

On 29 July 2008 a gang broke into the offices of the Jewish youth program "Stars", located at the Shalom Chaverim Center for Religious Jewish Youth in Lvov, broke several windows and beat two workers of the center with metal rods . The perpetrators also shouted antisemitic insults, such as "Kikes leave Ukraine", "Ukraine is occupied by Kikes", etc.

 

In late March 2008 UCSJ reported that posters warning that Jews murder children and use their blood to make Matza for Passover appeared in Sumy. The posters also accuse Jews for a series of recent disappearances and murders of children in the region.

 

In mid-May 2008 antisemitic graffiti appeared on several advertising boards in the center of Kiev. On one of the boards the perpetrators painted a Star of David with the word "death" in Russian under it.

 

On 5 February 2008 the Ukrainian Antena cable channel broadcasted an interview with Kostya Zarudny, head of the "Historical Truth" organization. Zarudny said that "We see how the lie of the Holocaust continues in Ukraine, how once again the fantastic figure of six million is brought out, and that in Ukraine one and a half million kikes were supposedly killed... How long is this kike lie going to brainwash us?" Zarudny has a PhD in history on "the distorted history of Ukraine."

 

On 13 February 2008 the Ukrainian Antenna cable channel broadcasted an interview with political analyst Igor Mazur on the partial rehabilitation of Ukrainian nationalists who fought with the Nazis against the Soviets during World War II. In response to a press conference held in Russia the previous day, during which the speakers criticized Ukraine activity on this subject, Mazur said that "the kike-lovers and other freaks gathered in Moscow" in order to criticize Ukrainian politicians who "for the kike's money" betray their nation. According to Mazur, "the task that the Jews have is not to allow the foundation of truly independent and strong states in Europe by healthy national forces ... Otherwise, their power will come to an end".

 

On 29 February 2008, antisemitic and racist statements were made during a meeting of Ukrainian Cossacks in Lvov. The Cossack leader Nikolai Pantelyuk said that "we have a state, but it is not Ukrainian". He also mentioned Russian and Jewish oligarchs and other examples of "the non-state forming ethnic groups" that should be ignored by the Ukrainians. Another speaker, Taras Chuk, historian and director of the Cossack Research Center at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, condemned "the dominance of enemies of Ukraine, the betrayers of Christ in the government, business and culture who destroy both the state and the nation."

 

On 11 June 2008 the Union of Young Orthodox Ukrainians, a previously unknown group, held a press conference in Kiev during which its representatives said that "Ukrainians have the right to any action in defense against the kike occupation and immigrants". The group's platform also calls for the banning "from Ukrainian television screens of all Rabinoviches" and to struggle against whoever is aiming to "destroy the Ukrainian culture, religion and nation".

 

On 1 July 2008 Oleg Tiagnibok, former member of the "Our Ukraine" party, said that "kikes and moskali and their minions have seized power, and without a tough, merciless purge, there is nothing we can do about it". "Moskali" is a derogatory name for Russians. This statement was part of a speech against Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko.