UWC leadership in Ukraine: Paul Grod addresses conference commemorating Holodomor victims

Kyiv, November 23. Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) leadership has arrived in Ukraine to mark the commemoration of the victims of the 1932-1933 Holodomor. Their official visit commenced with a conference observing the 90th anniversary of the Ukrainian genocide, organized in collaboration with the UWC. The event, held at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, was attended by Ruslan Stefanchuk, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, the third President of Ukraine (2005-2010), as well as representatives from international organizations, public figures, and scholars.

In addition to the UWC President, the delegation included Vice Presidents and members of the UWC Board of Directors: Andriy Futey, UWC Vice President and the President of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), Stefan Romaniw, First Vice President of the Ukrainian World Congress and Co-Chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO), Mykola-Myroslav Petretskyi, UWC Vice President for Eastern Europe and the President of the Union of Ukrainians in Romania (UUR), Roman Mykytenko, UWC Vice President for Northern Europe, and Roman Grod, the President of the World Congress of Ukrainian Students.

In his speech, the UWC President emphasized that Russian President Putin seeks to complete the genocide of Ukrainians started by Stalin. Although a growing number of countries have finally recognized the famine as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation, but despite this growing international awareness, many have yet to grasp the chilling continuity between Stalin’s attempt to erase Ukraine and the genocidal objectives of today’s Russian invasion, Grod said.

“Those who are currently calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine must take the genocidal nature of Russia’s invasion into account. Putin has made it perfectly clear that he intends to wipe Ukraine off the map of Europe. He views Ukraine’s very existence as an intolerable threat to Russia itself, and is prepared to pay almost any price to remove this threat by extinguishing Ukrainian statehood. His hardline stance is entirely in line with centuries of Russian imperial policy,” UWC President said.

According to Paul Grod, the global Ukrainian community has been making efforts for decades to make the world learn about the Holodomor and recognize this event as the genocide of the Ukrainian people. The UWC has been active in Holodomor awareness since at least the 1980s, Grod stated.

At the same time, Ruslan Stefanchuk, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, emphasized that the fight to establish justice continues. The Ukrainian authorities, together with the Ukrainian World Congress, are doing everything possible to have as many countries as possible declare the mass famine of 1932-1933 a genocide of the Ukrainian people.

“For the year 2022 and the incomplete year 2023, the number of parliaments that recognized the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people has doubled, compared to the entire period of Ukraine’s independence,” Stefanchuk said.

Stefan Romaniw, First Vice President of the Ukrainian World Congress and Co-Chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO), took part in the International Scientific Forum “Ukraine in the Holodomor Era: Power, Resistance, Identity.” The focus of the event is a complex of scientific problems related to the understanding of the multidimensional phenomenon of Ukrainian society’s resistance to Stalin’s policy of creating famine, as well as an exchange of ideas regarding the popularization of scientific knowledge about the Holodomor genocide in public history and school history education.