The European Parliament Thursday voted 507 to 12 to officially recognize the Holodomor famine as a genocide of Ukrainians “inflicted by Stalin”.

The resolution states:

Having regard to the 2003 Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada resolution declaring the deliberate famine as an act of genocide, to the Ukrainian Law of 28 November 2006 on the ‘Holodomor in Ukraine of 1932-1933’ and to the appeal by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on 16 November 2022 to the parliaments of the world on the recognition of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine, destruction of its energy and agricultural infrastructure, disruption of the export of Ukrainian grain and theft of millions of tons of grain has renewed fears of a famine, especially in the Global South, which depends on affordable Ukrainian grain. The European Parliament believes “the whitewashing and glorification of the totalitarian Soviet regime and the revival of Stalin’s cult in Russia has culminated in today’s Russia being a state sponsor of terrorism and a state using terrorist means” and views Russia’s current actions in Ukraine as a “repetition of horrific crimes against the Ukrainian people in our time.”

The Holodomor — meaning hunger (holod) and extermination (mor) — took place between 1932 and 1933 and killed millions of Ukrainians. The famine was planned and implemented by the Soviet regime in order to force through the Soviet Union’s policy of collectivisation of agriculture and to suppress the Ukrainian people and their national identity. Feeling threatened by Ukraine’s strengthening cultural autonomy, Stalin took measures to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry and the Ukrainian intellectual and cultural elites to prevent them from seeking independence for Ukraine.