Bulgaria recognises Ukraine's Holodomor as genocide

On February 1, Bulgaria's National Assembly voted 134-26, with no abstentions, to recognise the Great Famine (the Holodomor) in Ukraine in 1932-1933 as genocide, and condemned its perpetrators.

The draft resolution was proposed by the Parliamentary Foreign Policy Committee, BTA reports.

The resolution declares that a Day of Memory for the Victims of the Ukraine Holodomor will be observed on the last Saturday of November.

Parliament considers any act that denies, justifies and plays down this genocide an act of desecration of the memory of the millions of people who perished in the Holodomor, the document says.

Originally, GERB-UDF and Democratic Bulgaria submitted draft resolutions. In the end, the Foreign Policy Committee agreed on a common draft document, Chairperson Ekaterina Zaharieva said.

According to BTA's Reference Department, the Ukraine Famine of 1932-1933 affected the main grain-growing regions of the former Soviet Union: Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Lower and Middle Volga Region, Kazakhstan, West Siberia and the South Urals. Between 7 and 8 million people died of starvation, including 3.5 million in Ukraine, 2 million in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and between 2 and 2.5 million in Russia.