“Famine in Ukraine Should Not be Presented as Genocide,” Says Yanukovych

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych claimed on Tuesday that the notorious famine during the 1930s in Ukraine was not genocide.

The country’s leader stated this during a PACE session. He said that Holodomor was “a consequence of Stalin’s totalitarian regime,” but cannot be called genocide against any particular nation, since mass famine was a tragedy for all countries in the Soviet Union.

Today PACE will review a report on the famine. The issue was brought up by Ukraine during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko.

In 2006 Ukraine officially recognized famine as genocide. In 2010 Ukraine’s Security Department accused Joseph Stalin and other high-ranking Soviet officials of the crime. Russia is not accepting the Ukrainian version of historical events and insists that not only Ukrainians, but also people of other nationalities suffered from the starvation.