Bulgaria Calls Great Ukrainian Famine Genocide

Bulgaria, a former communist bloc country, on Wednesday recognized as genocide the famine in Ukraine caused 90 years ago by the Stalinist regime, a mass crime that has acquired new resonance since the Russian invasion.

Parliament adopted with 134 votes (out of 240 seats) a text stipulating that "

" during the Holodomor (extermination by hunger, in Ukrainian).

The victims will now be commemorated each year on the last Saturday in February.

Russophile political class

If this member country of the European Union and NATO has distanced itself from Moscow since the war in Ukraine, a large part of the population and the political class remains Russophile.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party, heir to the former Communist Party, boycotted the vote, while the pro-Russian ultra-nationalist formation Vazrajdane (Renaissance) spoke out against it.

The European Parliament had voted a similar text in mid-December, calling on "

" to also recognize this famine as genocide in the face of a "

".

Nicknamed "

" for the fertility of its black soils, Ukraine lost around 3.5 million inhabitants in the great famine of 1932-1933, against a backdrop of land collectivization, orchestrated according to historians by Stalin to repress any nationalist and separatist desire in this country, then a Soviet republic.

kyiv has been campaigning for years to have the Holodomor officially recognized as a genocide.

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Russia categorically denies such a classification, arguing that the great famine in the Soviet Union had not only Ukrainian victims, but also Russians, Kazakhs, Volga Germans and members of other peoples.

Germany, which in November also recognized the Holodomor as genocide, had been accused by Moscow of "

" Russia.