During the tour, Lion emphasized the need to ensure the safety of the thousands of Israeli worshippers due to arrive in a few months' time. "The Rosh Hashanah celebration in Uman is an event attended by the highest number of Israelis outside Israel. We are thankful Ukraine’s hospitality and ask them to pay special attention to the matter of security and safety", Lion said.
The team met with the head of the city district, the mayor, the deputy commissioner of Ukraine’s police, the commander of Uman’s rescue forces, as well as with hospital administrators and the city’s rabbis. This trip follows the meeting between the then Prime Minister Netanyahu with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May, where the two agreed on a framework that would allow Israelis to come to Uman while preventing the spread of the coronavirus as people can still get infected.The two reached an agreement that individuals with green cards will be able to travel between the countries and that officials will meet soon to implement this plan . Last year amid the outbreak of the virus the tens of thousands religious worshippers could not travel to Uman as Ukraine imposed a lockdown from August until September 28 the dates around and on the holidays when the annual pilgrimage occurs. This was done to contain a spike in coronavirus cases in the country. This caused about 2000 Breslov Hassidim to become stuck in Belarus for a couple of weeks as they hoped to cross the border into Ukraine.