The Israeli Cabinet announced "freedom for journalists" after the restriction of Kulyukhin's work

The official representative of the Israeli cabinet, David Menser, said he had no "additional information" about the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, who is praised in Ukraine. On March 17, he answered a question from Izvestia correspondent Nikita Kulyukhin, who had previously been suspended from the weekly press conferences of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, stressing that in Israel "no one forbids journalists from asking questions."

"I do not have any additional information about this Bandera you are talking about, and I will forward your question to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will probably be able to answer it more fully," Menser said.

He added that Israel is a "free country" in which journalists are not prohibited from asking questions.

The Seventh Eye magazine reported on March 16 that the Israeli Foreign Ministry had banned Kulukhin from attending the weekly press conferences of the foreign minister. This is due to the fact that at a press conference on March 4, a correspondent asked why the Israeli side did not condemn the glorification in Ukraine of accomplices of nationalists during the Holocaust, including their leader Stepan Bandera, responsible for the deaths of many Jews. Saar stated that he had not known about this before the question was asked, as well as about the tendency to rename streets of Ukrainian cities in their honor.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on March 17 that Russia was calling on its partners in Israel to reconsider the decision to ban Kulyukhin from attending the weekly press conferences of Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.