The Austrian Parliament approved a resolution recognizing the Holodomor as a crime of the Stalinist regime; Ukrainian diplomats hope this will create prerequisites for further recognition of it as a genocide.
This is reported by European truth.
The National Council last week unanimously approved a resolution denouncing the Holodomor as a "terrible crime", noting that it was a murder by starvation instigated by the Stalinist regime. The resolution also notes that hunger should not be used as a weapon against the civilian population or an instrument of pressure on other states.
The deputies during the debate noted that understanding history helps to see parallels with the present and is a safeguard against tragedies not being repeated; they mentioned the recognition of the Holodomor as genocide in the European Parliament.
Robert Laimer of the SPÖ (Social Democratic Party) called the Holodomor one of the biggest humanitarian disasters of the 20th century. Helmut Brandstätter of NEOS (New Austria and the Liberal Forum), who recently traveled to Ukraine with colleagues from the Greens and the Austrian People's Party, noted that now "dictator Putin is trying to finish what dictator Stalin started."
Eva Ernst of the Greens called Putin "the new Stalin" and said that historically and politically, the Holodomor was a genocide.
Martin Engelberg of the ÖVP said that from a modern perspective, the Holodomor should be classified as a genocide; Nicholas Sherak of NEOS also said he supported the idea of ​​calling the Holodomor "what it was, that is, genocide."
Ukrainian Ambassador to Austria Vasily Khiminets welcomed the decision, noting that the resolution creates the basis for Vienna to recognize the Holodomor as genocide in the future officially.
"The fact that the Holodomor was condemned as a 'terrible crime', the realization that a crime was committed against the Ukrainian people at that time, the connection of the past with the present in terms of the inadmissibility of using hunger as a weapon - these are eloquent facts. This created a platform for further work so that the Holodomor in Austria was recognized as genocide. We will work on this," he said in a commentary to "European truth".
