Poroshenko on Holodomor Remembrance Day: “Genocide, deliberately committed against Ukrainians”

On Holodomor Remembrance Day – the genocide of the Ukrainian people – Petro Poroshenko emphasized that unpunished evil is returning. And Russia, as the successor to the criminal Soviet regime, continues genocidal practices in Ukraine.

“Death loomed over every home, and in every home its hungry breath hung overhead, and in every home, in every home, a terrible fear of death arose.” The first evidence of the Holodomor of 1932-1933, perpetrated by the Soviet-Russian regime against Ukrainians, only came to light in 1962. Then, Vasyl Barka’s novella “The Yellow Prince,” about the genocide of the Ukrainian people, was published abroad. The book appeared in Ukraine even later – in 1991, when we gained independence,” the fifth President recalled.

“Until then, the genocide, deliberately perpetrated against Ukrainians to crush their desire for freedom, was concealed. The forced confiscation of food, mass repressions, the blockade of villages and entire districts, and the artificially created famine claimed at least 4 million Ukrainian lives. Few survived, but those who did fell silent. “The torture chamber,” Poroshenko writes.

“This was the terrible revenge of the Soviet-Russian regime for the freedom and independence that Ukrainians won in 1917-1921 and, unfortunately, lost. The Holodomors of 1921-1923, 1932-1933, and 1946-1947, the Great Famine of the 1970s—all of this is part of a more than century-long war waged by Russia to destroy Ukraine and break Ukrainians, to intimidate them, to force them to forget who we are,” Petro Poroshenko emphasized.

“We have not forgotten. We cherish the memory of the victims of the Holodomor—the genocide of the Ukrainian people. We loudly tell the world the truth. We fight the terror that the successor to the Soviet Union, Putin’s Russia, brought to our land. We, as a nation, must remember in order to exist,” Poroshenko urged.

“The cruel similarities between our present and our past prove one thing: evil returns unpunished. We must not allow our nation to be destroyed. The memory of the Holodomor must unite us and give us the strength to fight our eternal enemy. Today, as we remember the victims of the Holodomor—the genocide of the Ukrainian people—we stand together on our windowsills. Eternal memory to the innocent souls killed,” writes Petro Poroshenko.

Let us recall that on November 23, Ukraine commemorates Holodomor Remembrance Day – a day of tragic crimes against the Ukrainian people, when tens of millions of lives perished during the famines of 1932–33, as well as the artificial famines of 1921–23 and 1946–47.