Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

The Our Ukraine Party believes that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's statement that it would be unfair to recognize the Holodomor of the 1930s as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people violates the country's law on the Holodomor. The Our Ukraine Party believes that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's statement that it would be unfair to recognize the Holodomor of the 1930s as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people violates the country's law on the Holodomor.

"By his statement, Yanukovych directly violated the norms of the Ukrainian law of November 28, 2006 on the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, the first article of which clearly states: 'The Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine is genocide against the Ukrainian people.' And Article 2 says: 'Public denial of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine is considered the desecration of the memory of millions of Holodomor victims, the humiliation of the dignity of the Ukrainian people and is illegal," the party's press service said on Tuesday.

The document also says that "Yanukovych has ignored a ruling of January 13, 2010 by Kyiv's Court of Appeal, which recognized the leaders of the totalitarian Bolshevik regime as those guilty of 'genocide against the Ukrainian national group in 1932-33 through the artificial creation of living conditions intended for its partial physical destruction.'"

The press service said that the president had "actually opposed himself to the position of parliaments in Estonia, Australia, Canada, Hungary, Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico and Latvia, which officially recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people." The head of state also contradicts the position of the European Parliament, which recognized the Holodomor as a crime against the Ukrainian people, the press service said.

As reported, Yanukovych said at the PACE session in Strasbourg on April 27 that the famine of 1932-1933 could not be regarded as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

"The Holodomor was in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It was the result of Stalin's totalitarian regime. But it would be wrong and unfair to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against one nation," he said.

On November 28, 2006 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a presidential law on the Holodomor with amendments proposed by Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Moroz. The parliament recognized the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide against the Ukrainian people.