IAmid the Russian war of aggression, Ukraine on Saturday commemorated the Holodomor famine caused by the Soviet leadership 90 years ago. The leaders of Belgium and Poland, Alexander De Croo and Mateusz Morawiecki, and Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte also traveled to Kyiv to show their support. Belgium, Germany and France promised further millions in aid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country cannot be “broken”. The Ukrainians “went through a terrible thing,” Zelenskyy said in a video published on online networks on Saturday. He referred to the recent destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure by Russian attacks: “Once they wanted to destroy us through hunger, now through darkness and cold.”
The term holodomor (killing by starvation) is reminiscent of the years 1932 and 1933, when the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin caused a great famine by forcing collectivization of agriculture. Several million people died in Ukraine alone.
Today Ukraine is helping to alleviate world hunger
After meeting their Ukrainian colleague Denys Schmyhal, Morawiecki and Simonyte pledged their continued support for Ukraine in the nine-month war of aggression by Russia. Belgium’s Prime Minister De Croo promised another 37.4 million euros to help Ukraine through the winter.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) recalled the victims of the Holodomor in a video message. Hunger should never again be used as a weapon, said Scholz on the occasion of a new initiative “Grain from Ukraine”. Therefore, the current food crisis should not be accepted. Millions of people are affected. That is why the federal government, in coordination with the World Food Program, is providing a further 15 million euros for grain deliveries from Ukraine.
France announced additional support of six million euros for Ukrainian grain exports. President Emmanuel Macron said “the weakest countries must not pay the price for a war they did not want.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also assured that the EU would continue to support Ukraine. She again accused Moscow of using “food as a weapon”.
Meanwhile, Orthodox priests gathered at the Holodomor memorial in central Kiev for a silent ceremony for the victims of the famine. The famine was artificially caused, it was a genocide against the Ukrainians, priest Oleksandr Schmurygin told the AFP news agency. And now “history is repeating itself through Russia’s massive and unprovoked war.”
“Stalin’s system, the repressive state, wanted to destroy Ukraine as a nation,” said 39-year-old lawyer Andryi Savchuk. “Today we see that Stalin’s efforts are being continued by President Vladimir Putin.”
Russia denies genocide allegations against Ukrainians. It points out that the great famine provoked by Stalin was also responsible for millions of victims among Russians, Kazakhs and other peoples.
