Kyiv calls on Romania to recognize Holodomor

Ukraine will be grateful if Romania joins the states that recognize the extermination through starvation during 1932-1933 (Holodomor –the Ukrainian famine) as genocide against the Ukrainian people, Ukraine’s Ambassador in Bucharest, Yuriy Malko, told a press conference yesterday, according to the Romanian press.

The Ukrainian Ambassador’s meeting with the media was devoted to events in Ukraine 74 years ago, and especially, to the passage by the Supreme Rada (the Parliament in Kiev), on November 28, of a draft law proposed by Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, which confirms that tragedy as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Having mentioned that ten states have already recognized the extermination through starvation in 1932-1933 as a genocide against the Ukrainian people – Argentine, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, the United States of America and Hungary – Ukraine’s Ambassador in Bucharest outlined that the joint statement passed by the 58th session of the UN General Assembly introduced for the first time the term “Holodomor” in the international political dictionary. Tens of millions of Ukrainians had been exterminated through starvation by the Stalinist regime between 1932 and 1933, with the political goal of destroying Ukrainian peasantry and enforcing collectivization.