“No to the new genocide of Ukrainians!” Address of the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide

Ukraine has fallen victim to unprovoked aggression. The Russian army, which has invaded our land, is killing women and children, destroying schools and hospitals, destroying civilian infrastructure, and committing other war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Planned attacks on Ukraine were developed at the same address as the Holodomor genocide of 1932-1933 – Russia, Moscow, and the Kremlin. The historical origins of the hatred of Ukraine and Ukrainians radiated by the Russian government today are unquestionable. The main creator of the Holodomor genocide, Stalin, who killed with starvation 10.5 million Ukrainians, is surrounded by a real cult in modern Russia. According to a poll conducted in May 2021, more than half (53%) of Russian citizens support the view that “Stalin was a great leader.” More than a hundred monuments to Stalin were erected in Russia under Putin’s reign. People who adore murderers become murderers themselves.

The Russians came again to kill Ukrainians in the same places where Moscow committed genocide in 1932-1933. On February 26, 2022, near Volokhiv Yar in the Kharkiv region, the invaders shot dead a bus carrying civilians, killing five civilians in the Toretsk community and injuring six others. In Volokhiv Yar, 1,099 people died of famine during the Holodomor of 1932–1933. At least 15 Ukrainian citizens were killed in barbaric rocket assaults on Kharkiv on March 1, 2022. Ukrainians killed by Russians in Kharkiv have been photographed and spread across the world. Ninety years ago, the bodies of Ukrainians starving to death were photographed on the same streets of Kharkiv by Austrian engineer Alexander Wienerberger. His photographs later became one of the significant pieces of evidence of the genocide committed by the Stalinist regime. The terrible parallels between 1932 and 1933 and 2022 are obvious and striking.

Trying to “understand Russia,” for many years, the West has lulled itself with ritualized assurances that the emergence of “new Nazis” or “new Stalinists,” and the revival of their political methods are impossible in principle, as these tyrants belonged to a completely different era, and together with it left the historical arena and will never be able to return. Meanwhile, Putin’s regime established two decades ago in Russia has managed to turn back time, cultivating a social base that has become an ideal breeding ground for a revival of misanthropic totalitarian and imperial sentiments. For many Russians, imperial ambitions are the main driving force of their psychological self-defense. According to Putin’s propagandists, these ambitions were designed to compensate for dissatisfaction with the hard life, to overcome the frustration of the colossal gap between pretentious expectations and the insignificant and hopeless reality of the Russian Federation. There is no doubt that modern Putin’s Russia is an attempt to restore the Stalinist empire.

Putin’s power, like Stalin’s, is based on lies. The Soviet Union consistently denied the Holodomor of 1932-1933 and actively opposed the spread of information about it. The fight against the recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide became one of the Russian Federation’s historical policy priorities at the turn of the twenty-first century. Attempts to conceal the mass extermination of civilians, including denying the fact of extermination, are a key component of genocide. It is quite obvious that by persistently denying the Holodomor of 1932-1933, the Putin regime, at the same time, was secretly preparing for the complete liquidation of Ukrainian statehood and the extermination of Ukrainians. Killing civilian Ukrainians today, the Kremlin is once again brazenly denying its crimes.

We will not allow a new genocide to take place on our land. Today we have something to defend ourselves, and the world is not indifferent to what is happening in our country. The Armed Forces of Ukraine, territorial defense units, volunteers, the entire Ukrainian people are resisting the infamous aggressor. The civilized world is forming an anti-Putin coalition, and the international isolation of the aggressor country is strengthening day by day. Enemies who came to our land with weapons in their hands will be destroyed. Putin and his aides will appear before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. We will win!

Glory to Ukraine!