Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has compared the Holodomor of 1932-33 with the current war in eastern Ukraine, saying the war is a continuation of imperial genocide against the Ukrainian people.
He spoke in Kyiv as he laid a wreath in memory of the victims of the famine during a ceremony at the Holodomor memorial in the Ukrainian capital on November 22.
This was the date Ukraine had chosen to mark 81 years since the Stalin-era Holodomor famine.
The famine took place as Soviet leader Josef Stalin's police forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other foodstuffs.
It is estimated that millions of people died as a result of executions, deportation, and starvation during the Stalin-era campaign.
