What a shitty article to paint this as a fully cynical political action. Outside of Isreal and Ukraine facing the same enemy its important to remember that the vast majority of jews in the USSR were in the Ukrainian SSR and now have ties to modern day Ukraine. It'd be nice for Axios to at least mention that there is a cultural link between Isreal and Ukraine.
Nope those were the reason there were so few Jews left in Ukraine. Still the most of all the USSR's republics, though. Not entirely surprising Ukraine has been habitually multiethnic since pretty much forever and it's not exactly far from Jerusalem.
It's also important to remember that Ukraine was an incredibly good area to farm, had easy trade connections and was outside the control of catholic nations - so it was an attractive destination for refugees of all kinds.... that changed drastically when Tsarist Russia forced conformity (aka effectively a genocide) in the 1860s but before that point that area looked quite ethnicly diverse with an especially large Kazakh population.