A petition calling for the introduction of criminal liability for denying the fact of the Holodomor appeared on the official President’s website.

As of Monday evening, the initiative has collected more than 1,000 signatures out of the required 25,000. Artem Tatarchuk, the author of the petition noted that the introduction of criminal liability in Ukraine may ‘be the next step to the recognition of this event by other states and to the punishment of the country and people who committed it’.

‘With this petition, we ask the President of Ukraine to introduce criminal liability for denying the fact of the Holodomor as the genocide of the Ukrainian nation’, the petition says.

The Holodomor was organized by the Soviet authorities in 1932-1933. Ukrainian peasants were deprived of grain and other food supplies and were dying of hunger. According to different estimates, 2.6–5 million Ukrainians died during the genocide.

In December, the European Parliament recognized the Holodomor as the genocide.

Ukraine commemorates the victims of the Holodomor on the last Saturday of November.