(JNS) Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky returned this week to Kyiv, raising the Jewish state’s flag on a pole just outside the embassy building. The embassy itself is expected to reopen soon.

“Good to be back,” he posted on Twitter along with a photo of himself in the Ukrainian capital.

Among his first items of business, Brodsky went to pay his respects to the first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, who died on May 10 at the age of 88 after a long illness.

He was “a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people,” the ambassador wrote on social media.

Brodsky also noted that “President Kravchuk was the first Ukrainian leader to visit Israel, as the head of an official delegation, during which many bilateral agreements were signed. I share the grief with his family and with the Ukrainian people.”