JRL NEWSWATCH: “Many Ukrainians see Putin’s invasion as a continuation of Stalin’s genocide” – Atlantic Council/ Kristina Hook
“… [F]or most Ukrainians, the main factor fueling their determination … is the sense that Russia’s genocidal objectives leave them … no choice …. Either Ukrainians defend themselves, or Ukraine … will cease to exist. Examples of the Russian military’s genocidal conduct … and the Kremlin’s genocidal intent continue to mount. … [H]uman rights investigators have released new evidence accusing Moscow of a deliberate starvation campaign … [apparently] in place before … the full-scale invasion. … [There are] calls for Russia to face new war crimes charges of ‘starvation as a method of warfare.’ Accusations of weaponizing food come as Ukrainians mark a major anniversary of a remarkably similar crime … by the Kremlin … a century ago.
… Ukrainians [are] commemorat[ing] … [the tragedy of Stalin’s early 1930s] … Holodomor …. [a] deliberately engineered [artificial] famine [that] killed at estimated four million Ukrainians in less than two years. Declassified Soviet records … depict Stalin’s behavior as part of a broader campaign to extinguish Ukraine’s statehood aspirations. … Millions of Ukrainians would … becom[e] the largest group of political prisoners during the final [Soviet] decades … before playing a critical role in the eventual [Soviet] collapse …. [M]any irreplaceable features of Ukraine’s cultural heritage were lost forever during the Holodomor …. There is now a growing scholarly consensus … defin[ing] the Holodomor as … genocide … against Ukraine. … Most [Ukrainians] have a friend or family member … killed or wounded in Russia’s invasion. Many are also the descendants of people killed by the Stalin regime. …”