Voice of Ukraine

From Jamie Peipon: Today was Holodomor Commemoration Day in Ukraine. The statue in the picture is part of the memorial to the victims of the Holodomor in Kyiv. The Holodomor was an artificial famine which was intentionally organized and caused by Stalin and the Soviet government in 1932-33. Its purpose was to eliminate Ukrainians systematically. It is hard to come up with solid figures for how many people died as a result of this famine, but scholars generally put the number somewhere between 3 and 7 million Ukrainians killed. Even if you take the low end at 3 million, the math comes out to over 4,000 Ukrainians murdered by famine every single day for two years. That’s 170 Ukrainians murdered every single hour… for two years.

What is happening now in Ukraine is not a strange aberration in russia’s relationship to Ukraine at the hands of a dictator with a Napoleon complex. This is just the natural continuation of a policy of hatred and a posture of resentment towards Ukrainians by russia over many years. It should come as no surprise that russia can justify dropping bombs on civilians in Ukraine non-stop when murdering has been their standard operating procedure for decades.

Some might add, “Oh that was SOVIET russia… now everything is different.” Why then, would the current russian government refuse to acknowledge the famine as an act of genocide? Why would they sweep it under the proverbial rug by saying it was just a tragedy that effected the whole soviet union? And why, pray tell, would russia dismantle the Holodomor monument in Mariupol last month in an effort to erase it from people’s memory?

For much more on the Holodomor, I recommend reading a well-researched and well written book by historian Anne Applebaum called Red Famine.

The Ukrainians that are fighting for their independence are largely the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Holodomor survivors. These people survived by foraging for food, burying tiny jars of grain in the middle of fields, and by feeding their babies not with breast milk, but with a pinch of flour that the baby sucked on through a piece of cloth. Just imagine knowing that the same people that tried to kill your great-grandmother and her family by starving them to death are now trying to eliminate you and your children by freezing you to death as they intentionally target civilian infrastructure and apartment buildings.

“My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
‘Where is your God?’”