Today, Ukraine Honors the Sacred Memory of the Victims of the Holodomor

Today, Ukraine Honors the Sacred Memory of the Victims of the Holodomor
St. Basil of the Desert Hermitage – Reflection, History & Prayer

A Day of Sacred Remembrance
Today the nation of Ukraine, both at home and across the vast diaspora, bows before the holy memory of the millions of innocent lives destroyed during the Holodomor of 1932–1933, as well as during the artificially engineered famines of 1921–1923 and 1946–1947. These catastrophes were not accidents of nature nor the result of failed harvests. They were crimes, calculated, premeditated, and enforced with merciless precision by a tyrannical Soviet regime determined to crush the Ukrainian spirit, silence the Ukrainian language, and extinguish the Ukrainian Orthodox faith.

The Holodomor was a genocide. And its consequences echo into our present hour.

How the Soviet Yoke Starved Ukraine
To understand the Holodomor, one must understand its deliberate design. The Soviet leadership knew exactly what it was doing. Ukraine, blessed by God with some of the richest soil on earth, was the breadbasket of Europe. The farmlands stretching across the central and eastern regions of the country had fed millions for generations.

But to the Soviet regime, these fertile lands were seen not as the heart of a free people, but as a resource to be exploited, controlled, and, if necessary, punished.

The Machinery of Starvation

• Entire villages were stripped of grain, seed, livestock, and basic food supplies.
• Blockades were erected, preventing Ukrainians from leaving famine-stricken regions.
• Possession of a handful of grain could result in imprisonment or execution.
• Peasants—who had farmed these lands for centuries—were forbidden from collecting even the scattered kernels left in the fields.

This was not incompetence.
This was not mismanagement.
This was a targeted extermination of the Ukrainian countryside, especially in the vast farmlands of the East.

The Soviet regime understood that the Ukrainian peasantry formed the backbone of the nation’s identity, resistance, and Orthodox faith. To break them was to strike at the very heart of Ukraine.

The Soviet Plan: Replace Ukrainians With Loyal Settlers
When millions perished from starvation, exhaustion, and disease, the Soviet authorities did not mourn. They did not apologize. They did not repent. Instead, they seized the moment to reshape Ukraine itself.

After the famine ravaged entire regions, particularly in the East and Southeast, the agricultural core of the nation, the Soviets quietly began relocating ethnic Russian families into the emptied Ukrainian farmlands. These settlers were chosen for one reason:

They were expected to obey without question and align themselves with Moscow’s rule.

This demographic engineering was intentional:

• To dilute Ukrainian national identity
• To weaken Ukrainian resistance
• To create enclaves of loyalty to Moscow
• To ensure that no uprising for independence could easily take root

The effects of this forced resettlement remain visible to this day. Many of the regions targeted during the Holodomor are precisely the areas now occupied or attacked by Russia. This is no coincidence, it is the continuation of the same imperial plan.

History has not passed; it has simply changed uniforms.

How Today’s War Traces Its Roots to the Holodomor
The Holodomor was not only a tragedy of the past, it is a trauma whose aftershocks shape the present.

The demographic distortions created by Soviet resettlement are at the heart of many political, cultural, and military conflicts now raging across Ukraine.

Today’s war is not a new story. It is the next chapter of a very old one.

The Russian state, now under a new czarist-minded ruler, continues the same imperial aggression:

• Deportations of Ukrainian children
• Forced resettlement and “re-education”
• Systematic destruction of cities and villages
• Torture, starvation, and terror
• The deliberate targeting of Ukrainian culture, churches, and identity

The same cruelty used in the 1930s reappears today, updated, mechanized, and broadcast in real time for the world to see.

The Holodomor was meant to break the Ukrainian nation.
Today’s invasion seeks to finish the job.

A New Holodomor Looming?
As we remember the souls of the millions murdered through starvation, we must be honest: what we see today is not merely war, it is a renewed attempt at ethnic cleansing.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been:

• Killed
• Starved
• Tortured
• Displaced
• Driven into exile

Entire towns have been wiped out. Churches destroyed. Families shattered. Children taken.
Why?

Because Vladimir Putin dreams of reviving a “new czardom”, an imperial Russia built upon the ashes of a free Ukraine.

If the free world does not act decisively, if Ukraine is abandoned, if nations grow weary and turn away, then the unthinkable becomes possible:

We may be only months away from yet another Holodomor.

History warns us.
The Church warns us.
Conscience warns us.

We cannot allow these crimes to repeat themselves.

The Light of Remembrance
Tonight, candles once again flicker in windows and before holy icons.
Each flame bears witness:

• That every life taken in the Holodomor was sacred
• That God sees every injustice
• That truth will outshine every lie
• That Ukraine—faithful, prayerful, and resolute—cannot be broken

Memory itself becomes a shield.
And remembrance becomes an act of defiance.

A Prayer for the Victims of the Holodomor and for Ukraine Today
O Lord Jesus Christ, Eternal King and Lover of Mankind,
Look with mercy upon the millions who perished in the Holodomor and in every famine inflicted upon Ukraine. Grant them eternal rest in the dwelling place of the righteous.

Strengthen Your suffering people today, O Lord,
as Ukraine once again faces a murderous enemy
who seeks to starve, scatter, and silence Your faithful.

Scatter the evil designs of those who wage unjust war.
Deliver the innocent from death and destruction.
Reveal the wickedness of tyrants.
And preserve Ukraine—its Church, its people, its culture, its freedom.

May the witness of the martyrs of the Holodomor
be the seed of resurrection for the nation,
a beacon of truth for the world,
and a constant reminder that darkness can never triumph over the Light of Christ.

For You are the Resurrection and the Life,
and to You we give glory,
with Your eternal Father
and Your most-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit,
now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Вічная пам’ять. Eternal Memory.
May the memory of the victims of the Holodomor be eternal, and may Ukraine, by the grace of God, stand forever free.
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