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Commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor – Ukraine once again faces the threat of genocide

Doc. 16028: compendium of written amendments | Doc. 16028 | 02/10/2024 | Final version

Compendium index

Amendment 1 Amendment 2 Amendment 3 Amendment 4 Amendment 5 Amendment 6 Amendment 7

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ADraft Resolution

1The Parliamentary Assembly stresses that the present war of aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine must be seen in the context of an earlier attempt to wipe out Ukrainian nationhood, namely the Holodomor, whose 90th anniversary was commemorated in November 2023.
1.1The Holodomor, genocide by artificial famine, killed anywhere between 3.9 and 10 million Ukrainians, mostly in the countryside, away from foreign observers posted in the cities.

02 October 2024

Tabled by Ms Mariia MEZENTSEVA-FEDORENKO, Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO, Mr Yuriy KAMELCHUK, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK, Ms Larysa BILOZIR, Ms Olena MOSHENETS, Mr Serhii SOBOLIEV, Ms Lesia VASYLENKO, Mr Rostyslav TISTYK, Ms Yelyzaveta YASKO, Ms Iryna KONSTANKEVYCH, Ms Zanda KALNIŅA-LUKAŠEVICA, Mr Georgios STAMATIS

In the draft resolution, replace paragraph 1.1 with the following paragraph:

"The Holodomor, genocide by artificial famine, resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, shielded from the view of foreign observers located in urban areas."

1.2Hitherto secret documents published after the “Orange Revolution” show that the famine was the intended result of the policies imposed by the Soviet regime. The artificial famine targeted mostly Ukrainians, within the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as well as Ukrainians living in other regions of the Soviet Union; only ethnic Kazakhs, who may well have been targeted by the Kremlin for similar reasons, suffered comparable loss of life.

02 October 2024

Tabled by Ms Mariia MEZENTSEVA-FEDORENKO, Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO, Mr Yuriy KAMELCHUK, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK, Ms Larysa BILOZIR, Ms Olena MOSHENETS, Mr Serhii SOBOLIEV, Ms Lesia VASYLENKO, Mr Rostyslav TISTYK, Ms Yelyzaveta YASKO, Ms Iryna KONSTANKEVYCH, Ms Zanda KALNIŅA-LUKAŠEVICA

In the draft resolution, paragraph 1.2, second sentence, replace the words "only ethnic Kazakhs, who may well have been targeted by the Kremlin for similar reasons, suffered comparable loss of life" with the following sentences:

"The former USSR leadership intentionally implemented policies that led to famine in Ukraine, aiming to completely suppress any Ukrainian resistance to the totalitarian communist regime, subjugate the Ukrainian people, and extinguish their aspirations and efforts to establish an independent Ukrainian State. Just as the Russian Federation's armed forces are doing today, the Stalinist regime in 1932-1933 perpetrated criminal acts on Ukrainian territory against the civilian population, with the obvious intent of destroying, in whole or in part, the Ukrainian people as a distinct national community."

1.3According to the official Russian narrative, the famine was the unintended result of erroneous economic policies pursued by Josef Stalin. But documents show there was no shortage of grain until the authorities confiscated even the seed grain that would have ensured the following year’s harvest. Documents also show that the confiscation of food targeted not only grain, but any and all foodstuffs found in Ukrainian farmers’ houses in brutal searches carried out by officials even when family members were already dead or dying on the floor.
1.4The deadliness of the artificial famine was heightened by the fact that NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) troops surrounded the stricken villages and regions, preventing the inhabitants from escaping and blocking any foodstuff from entering the target regions.
1.5The Soviet Union also refused international aid offered by several countries to alleviate the suffering in Ukraine and instead exported confiscated Ukrainian grain abroad.
1.6The artificial famine was preceded by a campaign of show trials, enforced disappearances and other forms of repression against the Ukrainian intellectual elites – the cultural backbone of Ukrainian nationhood. This campaign of terror and repression targeting the Ukrainian “intelligentsia” took place years before Stalin’s purges and terror campaign in the late 1930s also engulfed numerous ethnic Russians and members of other Soviet nationalities.
1.7These special measures, in particular the confiscation of all foodstuffs in house-to-house searches and the NKVD blockades as well as the repression targeting the urban intellectual elite were applied only in Ukraine and other regions chiefly populated by Ukrainians, not in other parts of the Soviet Union suffering from famine.
1.8The Assembly therefore considers that the successive elimination of first the political and cultural leaders and then millions of independent peasants, who constituted the cultural backbone of the Ukrainian nation, was clearly intended as genocidal. Genocide, as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), does not require the physical elimination of all members of the target group. It is sufficient that living conditions are made so difficult that the existence of the group as such, in whole or in part, is put in jeopardy.

02 October 2024

Tabled by Ms Mariia MEZENTSEVA-FEDORENKO, Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO, Mr Yuriy KAMELCHUK, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK, Ms Larysa BILOZIR, Ms Olena MOSHENETS, Mr Serhii SOBOLIEV, Ms Lesia VASYLENKO, Mr Rostyslav TISTYK, Ms Yelyzaveta YASKO, Ms Iryna KONSTANKEVYCH, Ms Zanda KALNIŅA-LUKAŠEVICA

In the draft resolution, paragraph 1.8, replace the first sentence with the following sentence:

"The Assembly, therefore, determines that the systematic destruction of first the political and cultural leaders, who served as the cultural backbone of the Ukrainian nation, and then millions of ordinary Ukrainians, was deliberately intended as a genocide."

1.9Until the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians continued to suffer from the leaden silence about the Holodomor enforced by the Soviet regime. After Ukraine became independent, and in particular since the “Orange Revolution”, the Ukrainian people have enjoyed a revival of their language, culture and political consciousness, with unquestionable support for human rights and the rule of law. Such resilience in the face of genocide and historic and present brutal repression deserves the greatest admiration.
2The Assembly expresses its deep concern in relation to the genocidal threat that Ukraine is facing once again in the ongoing full-scale war of aggression by the Russian Federation, noting that:
2.1Russian propaganda, including statements at the highest level, deny the Ukrainian people’s very right to exist as an independent nation;
2.2the methods used by the Russian military in the war against Ukraine and the actions of the illegal Russian authorities in the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories show that these statements are not empty threats;
2.3the massacres of Bucha and Irpin and those discovered in other towns liberated from Russian occupation and the use of powerful explosives and even thermobaric and cluster munitions in heavily populated areas constitute war crimes and, given their widespread, systematic nature, crimes against humanity. The same is true for the siege and destruction of the city of Mariupol, the heavy shelling of Kharkiv, Odessa and other Ukrainian cities and towns, even ones far from the frontline, and the systematic targeting and destruction of vital civilian infrastructures such as hospitals, markets, power stations, district heating, food storage and processing facilities;
2.4the systematic tracking down, “filtering out” and ill-treatment in makeshift torture chambers of patriotic Ukrainian political and cultural elites (local officials, community leaders etc.) by the illegal occupation authorities, the forcible incorporation of men living in the temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine into the Russian military and the systematic destruction of cultural heritage such as churches, museums, publishing houses and monuments demonstrate the intention of the Russian occupiers to destroy Ukrainian nationhood whereever they can;

02 October 2024

Tabled by Ms Mariia MEZENTSEVA-FEDORENKO, Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO, Mr Yuriy KAMELCHUK, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK, Ms Larysa BILOZIR, Ms Olena MOSHENETS, Mr Serhii SOBOLIEV, Mr Rostyslav TISTYK, Ms Yelyzaveta YASKO, Ms Iryna KONSTANKEVYCH, Ms Zanda KALNIŅA-LUKAŠEVICA

In the draft resolution, paragraph 2.4, replace the words "systematic destruction of cultural heritage" with the following words:

"systematic destruction of the spiritual legacy and cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people"

2.5the forcible transfer and deportation of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories or faraway regions of the Russian Federation and Belarus is a war crime, a crime against humanity and may well amount to an element of genocide. The Assembly welcomes the arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Vladimir Putin and the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.

02 October 2024

Tabled by Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO, Ms Mariia MEZENTSEVA-FEDORENKO, Mr Rostyslav TISTYK, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK, Ms Sally-Ann HART, Mr Serhii SOBOLIEV, Mr Marcin ROMANOWSKI, Ms Iryna KONSTANKEVYCH, Mr Georgios STAMATIS

In the draft resolution, after paragraph 2.5, insert the following paragraph:

"just as in the 1930s, the Russian Federation is once again using food as a weapon, not only against Ukraine but also to exacerbate global food insecurity. By blockading and threatening ships in the Black Sea, the Russian Federation has weaponised trade and disrupted grain shipments to Africa and other regions. Ukrainian farmers face severe shortages of resources, while Russian forces have deliberately bombed farmland, mined fields, and destroyed vital agricultural infrastructure. The Kakhovka Dam disaster alone caused US $387.71 million in damage, cutting off irrigation to nearly 600 000 hectares of farmland."

Explanatory note

This amendment is self-explanatory.

3The Assembly therefore:
3.1recognises the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people and invites all national parliaments who have not yet done so to do the same;

02 October 2024

Tabled by Ms Mariia MEZENTSEVA-FEDORENKO, Mr Oleksii GONCHARENKO, Mr Yuriy KAMELCHUK, Ms Yevheniia KRAVCHUK, Ms Olena MOSHENETS, Ms Larysa BILOZIR, Mr Serhii SOBOLIEV, Ms Lesia VASYLENKO, Mr Rostyslav TISTYK, Ms Yelyzaveta YASKO, Ms Iryna KONSTANKEVYCH, Ms Zanda KALNIŅA-LUKAŠEVICA

In the draft resolution, paragraph 3.1, replace the words "recognises the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people" with the following words:

"recognises the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as a genocide of the Ukrainian people"

3.2commends Ukraine for the thorough investigations carried out by the Security Service (SBU) and the Prosecutor General’s Office since 2009. These judicial investigations exposed the horrific scale of the crime and the brutal methods used, and they identified its instigators and perpetrators, in particular Josef Stalin. Finally, they established their motive – to destroy the Ukrainian people as a national group, in order to ensure unfettered Russian domination of the Soviet Union;
3.3calls on all governments to do their utmost to help the people of Ukraine to fight off the ongoing genocidal assault against their nation and to hold to account the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the context of the Russian war of aggression;
3.4recalls that all contracting parties to the Genocide Convention, including all member States of the Council of Europe, have undertaken a legal duty to prevent and punish any acts of genocide and may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take appropriate action;
3.5calls on all member and observer States of the Council of Europe as well as States whose parliaments enjoy partner for democracy status with the Assembly to make use of all the instruments at their disposal, including under the Genocide Convention, to prevent any further acts of genocide against the Ukrainian people as a national group, including the attempt to commit genocide and the direct and public incitement to genocide, and to ensure that the perpetrators of earlier such acts are punished;
3.6invites the Prosecutor of the ICC to consider examining the reported allegations of genocide against the Ukrainian people, generally in respect of the situation in Ukraine, including in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, and more specifically regarding the transfer of Ukrainian children.