The 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, a famine caused by the Stalinist regime in the 1930s, took on new meaning after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The “Great Famine” or “Hunger-Terror” claimed from 1932 to 1933 about 3.5 million Ukrainian victims. Incidentally, the Holodomor in translation from Ukrainian means “killing by hunger.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured this Saturday that his people will stand firm in the face of Russian attacks that have cut off electricity and water in several cities across the country as winter temperatures approach.
“Ukrainians have experienced really terrible things. And despite everything, they retained the ability to disobey and love freedom. In the past they wanted to destroy us with hunger, today with darkness and cold,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Telegram, Agence was quoted as saying. France Press.
In a note sent to Luce, the government of Ukraine thanked Portugal for its solidarity with the adoption in 2017 of a resolution that qualified the Holodomor as genocide.
“Tomorrow (today), November 26, Ukraine remembers the victims of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 (…) In March 2017, the Parliament of the Portuguese Republic adopted Resolution No. 233/XIII. [intitulada] “Recognition of the Holodomor – the Great Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine”, which qualifies the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as a genocide of the Ukrainian people,” reads a note sent to Lusa, an official source of the MNE of Ukraine.
The Kyiv government’s message even names some Portuguese municipalities that have joined the initiative, such as “Grandola, Alkanena, Lagos, Agueda, Abrantes and Braga” and which “recognized the fact of the genocide.”
“We greatly appreciate and respect the solidarity of the Portuguese parliament and people with the Ukrainians, who survived one of the greatest national tragedies in their history between 1932 and 1933,” the text about the Holodomor says.
According to the Holodomor Museum in Kyiv, only 16 states, apart from Ukraine, have officially recognized the Great Famine as genocide: Australia, Ecuador, Estonia, Canada, Colombia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, The United States and the Vatican (this Wednesday, Pope Francis spoke on this subject, using the term “genocide”: “We pray for the victims of this genocide and for so many Ukrainians – children, women, old people and babies – who now martyr the aggression”). Some other countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Spain condemned it as an “act of extermination”.
The 17 are now joined by two more, Romania and Ireland, whose parliaments adopted resolutions this week. They should be followed by at least one more, Germany, which has already announced next Wednesday that the issue will be discussed and voted on in the lower house of its parliament (the Bundestag).
Russia rejects this classification, arguing that the great famine that devastated the USSR (Soviet Union) in the early 1930s claimed not only Ukrainian victims, but also Russians, Kazakhs and other peoples. In addition, academic opinion continues to differ as to whether the Great Famine of 1932–1933 constituted “genocide”. The main doubt is whether Stalin intended to kill Ukrainians in order to suppress the independence movement against the Soviet Union, or whether the famine was mainly the result of a combination of official incompetence and environmental conditions.
On the occasion of the 90th anniversary, the Prime Ministers of Poland and Lithuania, Mateusz Morawiecki and Ingrida Simonyte, arrived in Kyiv today and took part in the celebrations dedicated to this date, accompanied by the Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Mateusz Morawiecki accused Moscow of causing, as it had for almost a century, “artificial famine” as a result of the invasion.
“We gathered in the 1990s, on the anniversary of the Holodomor, artificially created by the Russian communist regime. Today we will witness another artificial famine arranged by Russia in the countries of Africa and Southeast Asia,” he said. warned.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexandre De Croo is also visiting Kyiv, for the first time since the start of the Russian invasion. “I arrived in Kyiv. After the brutal explosions of the last days, we are with the Ukrainian people. More than ever,” De Croo wrote on Twitter.
According to the Belgian agency, the minister plans to provide Ukraine with additional financial support in the amount of 37.4 million euros.
With Lusa
