Ukraine's President speaks on Holodomor Remembrance Day

Victor Yushchenko spoke in St. Michael’s Square in Kyiv to mark Holodomor Remembrance Day, president's press office reported.

In his speech, the President said the Ukrainian nation demanded that the Holodomor victims be honored as martyrs of one of the worst catastrophes in the history of mankind.

“I do not just ask but demand that Ukrainian parliament recognize the Holodomor as genocide. This is their obligation and an inevitable requirement of history,” he said. “Those who deny the Holodomor today loathe Ukraine deeply and resolutely. They hate us, our spirit and our future. They do not deny our history but deny Ukraine.”

Yushchenko urged the Russian Federation, as well as other countries oppressed by Joseph Stalin, to “stand near us and worthily demonstrate human sympathy by honoring the Holodomor.”

“We were hostages and victims of past evil and must jointly purge ourselves of it,” he said.

The President thanked countries that had already recognized the Holodomor as genocide. He expressed hopes the United Nations would unanimously do it before the 75-year anniversary of the tragedy.