You're reading: Kremlin bullies neighbors over Holodomor

Russia pressured Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev and other regional leaders in 2008 to not recognize the Holodomor famine, which killed millions in 1932-1933, as genocide against the Ukrainian people.

According to a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, published on Nov. 29 by WikiLeaks, Britain’s Prince Andrew, a frequent visitor to the region, said that Aliyev had received a letter from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev “telling him that if Azerbaijan supported the designation of the Bolshevik artificial famine in Ukraine as ‘genocide’ at the United Nations, ‘then you can forget about seeing Nagorno-Karabakh ever again.’"’

Nagorno-Karabakh is a separatist region on Azerbaijan’s border with Armenia.

Prince Andrew said other leaders had received similar “directive” letters.

The interventions by Medvedev are evidence of the extraordinary lengths that the Kremlin was prepared to go to in order to prevent international recognition for the Stalin-ordered famine, which claimed most of its starvation victims in Ukraine, whose rural residents resisted Soviet collectivization.

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko campaigned at home and abroad for acknowledgement of Holodomor as genocide, a move opposed by Russia. The debate was a major factor in spats between the two presidents, as Yushchenko defined Ukraine’s history in ways that were sharply at odds with Soviet and Russian interpretations, at least under Putin.