Ukrainian Holodomor and the War in Ukraine

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on securing this debate; she was my colleague on the delegation that went out to Kyiv two weeks ago. It is also a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), with whom I shared the van journey from London to Lviv as part of that convoy.

It is right that we reflect on the Holodomor and its role in history. It was a dark time in Ukraine’s history, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire rightly pointed out. Millions of people starved to death, not because there was a natural disaster or some blight that swept through the land, but because of a calculated policy decision. It was part of a general attempt to destroy the Ukrainian people and their identity and to make them subservient to the state based in Moscow, at the time led by Joseph Stalin. It is that core that resonates so firmly in today’s situation.

History is a battleground in Ukraine. It is clear from President Putin’s statements that he wants people to believe that Ukraine is just a political construct of the 1990s and that there is no history and identity, and not something that separates people from being part of Russia. It is part of his clear view that the Soviet Union should be back together, with him, of course, as its dictator. This is not a man who wants to create any form of democracy or respect for rights in the nations and lands that he wishes and seeks to control.

That is why this debate is so timely. It is not just a historical exercise. As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, the events are still within living memory. It is about fighting back today—when it is highly relevant—against the narrative that the lands of Ukraine are an extension of Russia, which they most certainly are not. Ukrainians are a historic people with their own language, culture and identity, which they literally fight every day to defend.

It was good to be out in Ukraine and to see the commitment there to standing firm, as well as the gratitude for the support. The reality is that Ukraine would not survive and be fighting today were it not for us and other nations and democracies giving them, and continuing to give them, the tools to do that job. We must not allow the fact that a year has passed to be a reason to slacken off our support. It is vital that that continues, especially as we see the Russian attacks continue, in particular around Bakhmut.

There are echoes of history and what Stalin did in some of the footage that has come out this week. We should be under no illusion: the Russian Federation is no respecter of international law on either aggression or human rights—or, for that matter, the most basic rules of warfare when it comes to those taken as prisoners of war. It is clear that it has very little respect for any international norms. Again, that is why it is so vital that, as a nation that believes in and respects the international rules-based order, we are there supporting Ukraine and making that contribution.

It is apt that we are having this debate, and that we talk about recognising the Holodomor for what it was. It was a calculated attempt to wipe out a nation and turn its lands to a different perspective. It was what we would call, in more modern terminology, ethnic cleansing in the effort by Joseph Stalin to dominate and assimilate a whole area within the empire that he had formed at that time. Given the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, it is timely now to respect this piece of history and to make it clear what it was. We also make clear our absolute condemnation of what happened then and our resolve to ensure that the Ukrainian nation today survives and flourishes.