France’s National Assembly on Tuesday recognized the Holodomor, a famine caused by Soviet rule in Ukraine in the early 1930s that killed millions, as genocide, AFP and RFI reported, Agerpres reported.

“Thank you to the deputies of the National Assembly for this historic decision,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded in a tweet in French shortly after the vote.

In a resolution adopted almost unanimously (168 votes “for” and 2 “against”), French MPs called on the government to recognize the Holodomor as genocide in order to meet Kyiv’s expectations regarding this painful topic, which has been revived since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. .

The Holodomor (extermination by hunger) “is a history of organized barbarism” and “the use of hunger as a political weapon,” said the first signatory of the initiative, MP Ann Genete. She ended her speech with the words “Long live free Ukraine” in the presence of the Ambassador of Ukraine to France.

The text was signed by members of seven of the ten political groups in the National Assembly, with the exception of France Invincible (LFI, far left), the Communists and the National Assembly (RN, radical right).

Moral relativism in the French parliament regarding the Ukrainian genocide

LFI deputies did not participate in the vote, believing that there are doubts about the genocide of those events from the point of view of international law.

“No one can deny the reality of the crime,” but “was it the extermination of the Ukrainian people as such?” asked LFI MP Bastien Lachaux.

The Communists were the only ones who voted against, citing the fact that deputies do not have the legitimacy to replace historians and judges.

“We refuse to contribute to the politicization of the stakes of memory and history,” explained MP Jean-Paul Lecoq.

What is said about the Holodomor in the resolution adopted by the French deputies

The adopted text “officially recognizes the genocidal nature of the famine imposed and planned by the Soviet authorities on the Ukrainian population in 1932 and 1933.”

He “condemns” these actions and “declares the support of the Ukrainian people in their desire to recognize the mass crimes committed against them by the Soviet regime.”

The National Assembly suggests that the French government accept this qualification of genocide and asks it to “encourage in the international arena free access to archives related to the Holodomor, especially in the Russian Federation,” in order to document the facts.

Delegated Minister of Foreign Trade Olivier Becht emphasized to the deputies “the obvious resonance (of their resolutions) with current affairs.” He supported this despite the fact that “the government is not in the habit of admitting facts of genocide that have not previously been qualified as such in court.”

Several European countries recognized the Holodomor as genocide after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began last year. Romania and the Republic of Moldova did it in November.

The corresponding resolution was also adopted by the European Parliament in December. Even countries historically close to Russia, such as Bulgaria, recognized the Holodomor as genocide. The parliament in Sofia did so at the beginning of last month.

As for Russia, it categorically refuses such a classification, referring to the fact that the great famine of the 1930s brought victims not only to Ukrainians, but also to Russians, Kazakhs and other peoples.

On the same topic:

• The Ukrainian genocide that Russia would like to forget. The behavior of Russians then and now

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