Khodorkiv, Ukraine
CNN
—
Traditional Ukrainian tapestries, family photos, and cheesy posters of rural landscapes line the walls of her wood-burning cottage. The only records of her tragic past are her birth certificate and memories.
In her 102 years, Lyubov Yarosh has survived three famines. In his 1932-33 “Holodomor”, Joseph, by order of his Stalin, the Ukrainian peasants all produced in order to promote the industrialization of Moscow and suppress Ukrainian nationalist resistance. stripped of grain.
“We could not eat anything at that time. We ate linden leaves and nettles. What I ate,” Yarosh told CNN from his home in the village of Khodolkiv in the Zhytomyr region, about two hours’ drive west of Kiev.
At the age of 13, she saw her brother and sister die in Ukraine’s worst mass starvation. “I was completely swollen. My legs were swollen, my arms were swollen.
At that time, the Kremlin sought to rid Ukraine of independent peasants, their languages, histories, artists and independence.
Many believe there are striking parallels to what Russian President Vladimir Putin is up to now.
“The leaders and organizers of these genocides are sitting in the same place, in the same office,” says Mikhail Kostiev, head of information and publications in Ukraine. National Holodomor Genocide Museum“And the center of these events is Moscow. Their dictatorship.”
Comparing what is happening now with the past, Kostif added that “the object of destruction is Ukraine as a state and those who resist this regime.”
Three of Yarosh’s grandchildren defend the country as soldiers after the Kremlin refused to recognize Ukraine’s independence. And the harrowing memories of her own childhood are still vivid. “Little children were dying of hunger. I threw dirt on them without any ritual,” she says.
Nearly 90 years later, she refuses to accept the latest attack. “We have to get rid of them, leaving no one behind. Only then will there be peace,” Yarosh said of the Russians.
Her anger at what was being done to her land and people spurred her into action. As she was chatting in her home, which she shares with her daughter, two volunteers arrived to deliver her burlap.
She said that in order for Ukrainian soldiers to better kill Russians, burlap cords were tied to nets to create camouflage sniper suits that disguised soldiers in vegetation and snow. I enjoy my job.
Such is the logic today, a legacy of more than 100 years of resistance to repeated efforts by Moscow to colonize its neighbors, either as the Soviet Union or as a post-Soviet dictatorship.
Whether Russia’s actions in Ukraine today amount to genocide is still being debated.
Russia denies allegations of war crimes. But more than just the murders and deliberate targeting of civilians in Russia-occupied territories over the past 11 months have revealed details of a relentless campaign to obliterate Ukrainian state markers, symbols and institutions. . Policy from the Kremlin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin does not believe that a state exists in Ukraine. He sees vast agricultural lands, industrial power, and western mountains as part of a larger Russia, much like Catherine II declared most of Ukraine “New Russia” in the 18th century.
In the 1930s, Stalin’s Holodomor – Extinction by Starvation – focused on annihilating the independence of Ukrainian peasants.
Enterprising individuals with their own capital in the form of land and livestock were an abomination to the Soviet utopia. Stalin had to crush them and force the survivors into collective farms.
He murdered Ukrainian artists, poets, actors and historians, banned the language from schools, and attempted to wipe the Ukrainian concept from the public consciousness.
In most Ukrainian views, Putin has taken over Stalin’s job. In areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia, Ukrainians are forced to acquire Russian citizenship, learn the Russian language, and follow the Russian curriculum.
On Sunday, the Ukrainian National Resistance Center claimed that Russian forces had seized and burned Ukrainian-language books from public and school libraries in the Luhansk region.
According to the Ukrainian government, thousands of Ukrainians have been deported and 14,000 children are missing. The UN says a large but unknown number of Ukrainian children are being forcibly adopted by Russian families. These were alleged to be war crimes or crimes against humanity, and may form part of the later argument that they amounted to acts of genocide.
“In 1932-33 the main method was starvation, depriving them of all food and rendering them incompatible with life. ,” says Kostif of the National Holodomor Genocide Museum of Ukraine.
“But now we have a wider range of tools, they are more military-related. New weapons, new missiles. A huge army aimed at destroying and suppressing Ukrainian resistance.”
