This great famine was orchestrated according to historians by Stalin to repress any nationalist and independence desires in this country, then a Soviet republic.
This Saturday, Ukraine commemorates the Holodomor, the great famine which cost the lives of several million people under the Stalinist regime.
Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska attended the ceremony in Kyiv, surrounded by military officials.
“It is impossible to forget, understand and above all forgive the horrible crimes of genocide that the Ukrainian people suffered in the 20th century”declared the Ukrainian president.
Volodomyr Zelensky called on his fellow citizens to light candles in memory of the many victims.
A few weeks ago, the Council of Europe described the Holodomor as a genocide, as the European Parliament did last year.
Ukraine lost four to eight million inhabitants in the great famine of 1932-1933, against a backdrop of land collectivization, orchestrated according to historians by Stalin to repress any nationalist and independence desires in this country, then a Soviet republic.
Russia, for its part, categorically refuses the classification of genocide, citing the fact that the great famine of the 1930s had not only caused Ukrainian victims, but also Russians, Kazakhs and other peoples.