The lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, adopted on Wednesday evening by a large majority a resolution recognizing as "
genocide
" the famine in Ukraine caused 90 years ago by the Stalinist regime.
The vote in favor of the resolution, made public last week, was beyond doubt: it was carried by the ruling coalition, formed by the SPD, the Greens and the liberals of the FDP, which was joined by the opposition conservative CDU-CSU.
The two extreme parties, left with Die Linke and right with the Alternative for Germany (AfD), abstained.
“
I thank the deputies of the Bundestag for this historic decision
”, reacted the Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelensky on his twitter account.
"
Truth always wins
," he added.
Read alsoHolodomor: 90 years later, Ukrainians paid tribute to the victims of the great famine
In 1932 and 1933, about 3.5 million Ukrainians were victims of the "
Holodomor
" (which means, in Ukrainian, extermination by starvation) committed by the Stalinist regime.
Crops were confiscated in the name of land collectivization.
This famine is "
in the list of inhuman crimes committed by totalitarian systems which have caused the disappearance of millions of human lives in Europe, especially in the first half of the 20th century
",
Russia contests this classification
This classification as “
genocide
”, a concept coined during the Second World War, also takes on current significance, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"
Once again, violence and terror must deprive Ukraine of its vital bases and submit the whole country
", underlined the ecologist deputy Robin Wagener, one of the initiators of the text.
Calling the Holodomor a “
genocide
” is a “
warning signal
,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin "
is part of the cruel and criminal tradition of Stalin
", denounced moreover Mr. Wagener.
Ukraine has campaigned for years to have the Holodomor recognized as a genocide.
Russia categorically denies such a classification, arguing that the great famine which raged in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s had not only Ukrainian victims, but also Russians, Kazakhs, Volga Germans and members of other peoples.