The Ukrainian ultranationalist Svoboda Party has made unprecedented gains in the country’s parliamentary elections, where it garnered 12 percent of the vote.

Svoboda – or Freedom Party – has gained a reputation as an anti-Semitic movement due to anti-Jewish statements by its leaders.

Sunday’s vote means the party can now control a faction in parliament for the first time, according to exit polls. The party won less than one percent of the vote in the last election in 2007.

Antisemitism Decoded

Arno Rosenfeld helps you separate the signal from the noise about antisemitism and understand current debates over Jewish safety.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Party leader Oleg Tyagnibok has called in the past for purges of the approximately 400,000 Jews living in Ukraine, as well as other minorities. The party has held several protest rallies against the presence of Jews in Uman, in the center of the country.

Exit polls showed the governing party of President Viktor F. Yanukovich in the lead with 27.6 percent to 32 percent, followed by Tymoshenko’s 24 percent. Svoboda appeared to be fourth largest, after a party led by a former boxing champion, Vitali Klitschko.

Earlier this month, Svoboda signed a cooperation agreement with Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party, which was second strongest in the elections.

The agreement between Svoboda and Tymoshenko’s party drew a critical statement over the weekend from Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman. “Anti-Semitic insults by Svoboda have caused outrage on a number of occasions both in Ukraine and in Israel,” Liberman said. “The expression of such views reminds of the darkest pages in the history of the last century that has led humanity to the tragedy of the World War II.”

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount