Croatian MPs Recognise Soviet-Era Ukrainian Famine as Genocide

A memorial ceremony at a monument to Holodomor victims in Kyiv, November 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/SERGEY DOLZHENKO.

Croatian MPs unanimously voted on Wednesday to adopt a declaration recognising the Holodomor of 1932-33 as a crime of genocide committed by the Soviet authorities against the Ukrainian people.

The declaration said that the Holodomor - which means 'killing by starvation' - was an enforced famine organised by Josef Stalin's regime to subjugate the then Soviet republic of Ukraine.

The vote was welcomed by the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

"I am grateful to the Republic of Croatia for this historic vote. The world will never put up with the crimes of the Kremlin - neither past nor present," Zelensky wrote on Twitter.

The initiative to adopt the declaration was launched on the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, in which some four million Ukrainians died.

During a debate in the parliament on June 19, all parliamentary groups announced that they would vote for it, but some opposition MPs complained that the topic was only being discussed in 2023, a year and a half after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Social Democrats MP Davorko Vidovic argued that the Holodomor should have been condemned much earlier, given that it has long been known that it was one of the biggest crimes of the 20th century.

"I regret that we haven't condemned the crimes of the totalitarian regime on principle, as we wouldn't have made the declaration if there had been no Russian aggression; we should have made it 15 years ago," said Vidovic.

The vote on the declaration was watched from the parliamentary gallery by Ukraine's ambassador to Zagreb, Vasyl Kyrylych.

"The global recognition...