Ukraine marks Holodomor Victims Remembrance Day
Ukraine honors the memory of the victims of the Holodomor famines on Saturday, November 25.
Nationwide commemorative events will begin near the Holodomor Victims Memorial in Kyiv at 14.30. At 16.00, Ukrainians will observe a nationwide minute of silence by lighting candles near the Holodomor memorials or on the windowsills of their homes.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page: "Crimes against humanity do not have a period of limitations. We will never forget the terrible crime of the organizers of the Holodomor. Ukraine remembers..."
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said: "We will always remember our brothers and sisters starved to death. They wanted to destroy us, but we survived, and today we are building a society whose most important value is human life."
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov, in turn, said that Ukraine now saw "manic attempts to destroy Ukraine."
"Like almost a century ago, the imperial regime is again responsible for this. However, they will not be able to destroy Ukraine's sovereignty, freedom and dignity. They will not be able to destroy Ukraine," he said.
Ukraine's third president, Viktor Yuschenko, also addressed the Ukrainian people, recalling the established data on the Holodomor of 1932-1933.
"We identified almost two million people who were killed. Obviously, this figure is incomplete, and it's far from complete, but this is just the beginning of our work. These are also concrete names, the names of our relatives, our families, our neighbors, our people," Yuschenko wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday.
According to him, almost 14,000 villages and towns affected by the Holodomor of 1932-1933 were authentically found in 18 regions of Ukraine. In addition, Yuschenko said, the Security Service of Ukraine confirmed 816 mass graves, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were buried.
"We have summarized the lists of 522 populated localities on the 'black boards.' These are specific names and specific fates," he said.
