(JNS.org) The Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) convened in the territory of the former Soviet Union for the first time, on Sunday in Kiev. The meeting in the Ukraianian capital “was part of the Jewish Agency’s efforts to strengthen its connection with the Jewish communities of the former Soviet Union” and “a reflection of the shared destiny and the solidarity between world Jewry and Ukrainian Jewry,” said JAFI Chairman of the Executive Natan Sharansky, the Jerusalem Post reported. About 200,000 Jews still live in the Ukraine and some Ukrainian Jews have criticized JAFI’s decision to hold the meeting in Kiev due to recurring antisemitism and an “assault on political and social rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens” in the country, wrote Chairman of the Vaad of Ukraine Josef Zissels in a recent letter to Sharansky on the issue. Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the far-right Svoboda party in Ukraine, recently said the country “is being controlled by a Russian-Jewish mafia.”