ISRAEL has issued its strongest rebuke yet of Ukraine’s sanction of neonazi activity, with its ambassador condemning “glorification of collaborators with the Nazi regime.”

Joel Lion condemned a torchlit New Year’s Day march through Kiev honouring Stepan Bandera, the head of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing the Ukrainian Insurgent Army which fought alongside the Nazis during the second world war.

Marchers carried banners reading: “Nationalism is our religion, Bandera is our prophet.”

The march has become an annual tradition since the fascist-backed “Maidan” coup against Ukraine’s elected leader Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

The OUN played a major role in the Holocaust in Ukraine, murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles in its fight for an ethnically “pure” nation.

Its fighters have been rehabilitated as anti-communist heroes by the far-right government since 2014.

In Bandera’s birthplace Lviv, regional leader Maxim Kozitsky was among those attending events celebrating Bandera’s life, laying a wreath on a monument to him.