German MPs are set to approve a resolution declar-ing as “genocide” the 1930s starvation of millions in Ukraine under Joseph Stalin, adopting language used by Kyiv, according to a draft text seen by AFP on Friday.
The joint text by deputies from Germany’s cen-tre-left-led coalition and the opposition conservatives is intended as a “warning” to Russia as Ukraine faces a potential hunger crisis this winter due to Moscow’s invasion.
Lawmakers plan to vote on the resolution next week, following Ukraine’s memorial day for the famine, which falls each year on the last Saturday in November.
Holodomor, as the famine is known in Ukraine, is among “the list of inhuman crimes by totalitarian systems in which millions of human lives were wiped out” in the first half of the 20th century, the draft text reads.
“People across Ukraine, not just in grain-producing regions, were impacted by hunger and repression. This meets the historical-political defini-tion from today’s perspective for genocide,” it said. The 1932-33 “Holodomor” — Ukrainian for “death by starvation” — is regarded by Kyiv as a deliberate act of genocide by Stalin’s regime with the intention of wiping out the peasantry. Stalin’s campaign of forced “collectivisation” seized grain and other foodstuffs and left millions to starve.—AFP
