Germany will adopt a resolution recognizing as a “genocide” the famine in Ukraine caused ninety years ago by the Stalinist regime, according to a draft resolution of the coalition and the opposition, unveiled on Friday 25 November.
This, tabled by the ruling coalition formed by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the liberals of the FDP, as well as by the conservative opposition CDU-CSU, will be debated next Wednesday in the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament.
In 1932 and 1933, approximately 3.5 million Ukrainians were victims of the “Holodomor” (which means “extermination by starvation” in Ukrainian) committed by the Stalinist regime. Crops were confiscated in the name of land collectivization.
This famine is part of “in the list of inhuman crimes committed by totalitarian systems that have caused the disappearance of millions of human lives in Europe, especially in the first half of the 20th centurye century “condemns the draft resolution, consulted by Agence France-Presse.
This crime “is part of our common history as Europeans”. “All of Ukraine has been affected by famine and repression, not just its grain-producing regions”underlines the draft resolution. “From the current perspective, it is therefore obvious that this is a genocide on the historical and political level”he adds.
Russia categorically refuses such classification
This classification as “genocide”, a concept coined during the Second World War, also takes on current significance with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Once again, violence and terror must deprive Ukraine of its vital bases and subjugate the whole country”, underlines the ecologist deputy Robin Wagener, who is one of those who are at the origin of the text. Calling the Holodomor “genocide” is a “warning sign”according to him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “is part of the cruel and criminal tradition of Stalin”also denounces Mr. Wagener.
Ukraine has campaigned for years to have the Holodomor recognized as a genocide. Russia categorically refuses such a classification, because the great famine which raged in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1930s had not only Ukrainian victims, but also Russians, Kazakhs, Volga Germans and other peoples.