Yevtushenko said he wrote the poem after visiting the site of the mass killings near Kiev and not finding anything to memorialize the tragedy that occurred there.
On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, Israel's president caused an uproar by noting the collaboration of some Ukrainian nationalists in the Jewish genocide.
The funds would pay for the construction of two memorial paths — one for Jewish victims and one for Ukrainian non-Jews who saved Jews — at the site where 50,000 Jews were murdered.
