European Parliament adopts resolution recognizing Holodomor as 'genocide'

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday recognizing the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine, commonly known as the Holodomor, as a "genocide."

"MEPs strongly condemn these acts, which resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, and call on all countries and organisations that have not yet done so to follow suit and recognise it as genocide," said a press release by the assembly.

The resolution accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin's government of "violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, seeking to liquidate Ukraine as a nation state and destroying the identity and culture of its people" in the war between the two countries that began on Feb. 24, the statement noted.

"It also condemns the fact that the ongoing war has created a global food crisis, with Russia destroying and looting Ukraine's grain stores and continuing to make it difficult to ensure Ukrainian grain exports to the most deprived countries in the world," the press release said.

European lawmakers also called on the EU and third countries to raise awareness about the Holodomor and "other crimes committed by the Soviet totalitarian regime."

"While condemning the current Russian regime for manipulating historical memory for the purpose of its own survival, Parliament calls on the Russian Federation, as the primary successor of the Soviet Union, to apologize for those crimes," the statement concluded.

In a separate resolution, the Czech parliament recognized the Holodomor as a genocide on Wednesday, while German legislators had done the same in late November.

The Holodomor is considered one of the most painful events in the history of Ukraine.

At least 3.9 million people starved to death between 1932 and 1933 as a result of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's policies and the "collectivization" of agriculture, according to the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory.

The Soviet Union implemented the collectivization of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 to integrate individual landholdings and labor into collectively controlled and state-controlled farms. It affected a significant part of the west and south of the USSR.

Estimates conclude that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union.

Ukraine claims that the famine on its territory was "intentional" and has called it a "genocide of the Ukrainian people."