The Senate of the Czech Republic on Wednesday recognized the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has already responded to this decision, thanking the Czech deputies for restoring historical justice.
“I welcome the decision of the Czech Senate to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide of Ukrainians. I am grateful to my Czech friends for affirming the truth and restoring historical justice,” Zelensky said on Twitter.
According to him, the punishment of Russia for all the crimes of the past and present is “inevitable.”
In November, the parliaments of Romania, Ireland, Moldova, and Germany recognized Holodomor as the genocide of Ukrainians. Ukraine has been fighting to get Holodomor recognized as an act of genocide internationally.
So far, 20 countries have recognized Holodomor as such.
Ukraine annually commemorates the Holodomor victims on the fourth Saturday of November.
The famine, known as the Holodomor, took place in 1932-33 as Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s police forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other foodstuffs.
Historians say the failure to properly harvest crops in Ukraine in 1932 under Soviet mismanagement was the main cause of the famine.
It is estimated that up to 9 million people died as a result of executions, deportation, and starvation during the Stalin-era campaign.
Many Ukrainians consider the famine an act of genocide aimed at wiping out Ukrainian farmers.
In October 2018, the U.S. Senate adopted a nonbinding resolution recognizing that Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932-33.
Moscow has long denied any systematic effort to target Ukrainians, arguing a poor harvest at the time wiped out many in other parts of the Soviet Union.
