Russian Foreign Ministry should read more books about history - Ukraine`s MFA

The statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Information and Press about Holodomor is contrary to historical facts.

According to an UNIAN correspondent, top deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Ohryzko said this to journalists today.

He turned attention to the fact that the “statements, made today by the RF Information Department, are not true, and are contrary to the elementary historical knowledge”.

V.Ohryzko pointed out that he has intent to summon the councilor at the Russian Embassy to Ukraine in order to give him a clear view of the situation concerning smashing up the exhibition, devoted to the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932-33, in Moscow on 17 November.

In his turn, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Andriy Deshchytsia emphasized that “to exchange statements about that-time events is absolutely tactless, because we humiliate ourselves by doing so”.

He stressed that Ukraine has determined its position concerning the recognition of Holodomor of 1932-33 as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation. “Solely within the frameworks of a friendly and partner advice, I would like to advise our Russian colleagues, including that of the RF Foreign Ministry’s Information Department, to read books about history”, he added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, on November 17, 7 representatives of the Eurasian Union of Youth (EUY) smashed up the exhibition in memory of Holodomor [Ukrainian Great Famine of 1932-33] exhibition in the Ukrainian cultural center in Moscow. EUY believes that the exhibition stirred up hatred between Russia and Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry assessed these actions as illegal, provocative, and anti-Ukrainian.

On 19 November the Department for Information and Press of the Russian Foreign Ministry disseminated a commentary, reading that the announcement of the famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine as an act of genocide “is a one-sided distortion of history in favor of modern market’s political-ideological guidelines”. The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that “the theme of hunger of 30ies in the Soviet Union, the victims of which were people of many nationalities, in particular, Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs, and other nations, more and more becomes a topic of different speculations by certain political circles in Ukraine”. The Russian MFA is confident that should the Ukrainian great famine be recognized as an act of genocide, it “will insult the memory of victims of other nationalities, who died because of hunger in the former USSR”, reads the commentary of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information Department.

By different estimates, from 7 to 10 millions of Ukrainians died during the Great Famine of 1932-33, which was a result of Stalin’s policy against those who resisted his plans (Ukrainian farmers). Stalin decided to sacrifice a considerable part of this group in order to eliminate the opposition to his projects and to frighten the rest of the Ukrainian nation into accepting the role of cogs (as he liked to call them) of the great socialist mechanism.