The probe was opened following an appeal by Academician Yukhnovsky, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, VR lawmakers O. Chornovolenko and H. Omelchenko, L. Lukyanenko, the head of the Association of Holodomor Researchers, R. Krutsyk, the head of the Memorial Society as well as other prominent Ukrainians. In the appeal, they demanded to investigate the murder by famine of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-1933.
After analyzing the appeal and reports about the genocide, SBU in cooperation with the Prosecutor General’s Office and UINM carried out an examination of case materials indicating that, following the defeat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1921, the Bolsheviks launched large-scale unlawful campaign to forestall the emergence of an independent Ukrainian state and to turn Ukraine into a denationalized territory of the FSU.
To this end, the Soviet regime introduced forced collectivization of farms, dekulakization, deportation of Ukrainian families to Siberia and Kazakhstan, illegal seizure of their land and property, repression and physical extermination of Ukrainian farmers.
The Stalin regime destroyed traditional individual farming system, replacing it with state-run kolhosps. To enforce this transition, the Bolsheviks confiscated grain and food supplies, imposed harsh quotas for grain deliveries, banned trade in food in rural areas, black-listed farmers who could not cope with overly high grain delivery quotas and expelled them to remote areas of the USSR. The regime banned the starving Ukrainians to leave their villages in search of food, used military and NKVD units to seal off Ukraine – creating unbearable conditions for the survival of Ukrainian farmers.
Such unlawful actions of the Stalin regime were aimed at murdering the Ukrainian nation by famine.
Other nations living in Ukraine at the time were also affected by regime’s crimes.
SBU officials interviewed eye-witnesses of the 1932-1933 Holodomor, declassified Soviet archive materials, research documents by domestic and foreign scholars, media reports of the period, and Kyiv Mohyla and Lviv Franko universities lawyers defining the Soviet regime’s atrocities as murder by starvation which can be classified as a crime against humanity.
---- [2] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------To this end, the authorities arranged mass forcible collectivization of agriculture, dispossession and deportation of Ukrainian peasant families, illegal confiscation of their property, reprisals and physical elimination of people. The said performance was aimed at organizing hunger to kill the Ukrainians as an ethnic group. Representatives of some other nationalities also fell victim of the authority's crimes. The officials in charge collected evidence of witnesses of the evens in Ukraine during the Holodomor of 1932 - 1933, obtained declassified archives and scientific studies by domestic and foreign scientists, historians and human right activists. In launching these criminal proceedings, the Security Service of Ukraine was guided by the norms and principles of the appropriate international conventions signed by Ukraine. During the investigation, the Security Service will follow the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the Law on the Holodomor of 1932 - 1933.
---- [3] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has brought a criminal case on the fact of committing a genocide, which caused death of millions, in Ukraine in 1932-33.
SBU head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko claimed this on Monday at a meeting with representatives of the World Congress of Ukrainians, the SBU press-service disclosed to UNIAN.
“Ukraine has collected enough evidence to bring a criminal case on the fact of the famine, which was artificially created by the Bolshevik regime and caused mass death of citizens”, the SBU head stressed.
Through the World Congress of Ukrainians, he turned to leading foreign lawyers with a request to help find out all the circumstances connected with preparing and committing the genocide in 1932-33.
WCU executive secretary Stephan Romaniv noted that Ukrainian communities in the world assess such steps as a significant progress on the way towards establishing the historical justice.
Participants of the meeting agreed to collaborate in the sphere of disseminating the true information about the Holodomor genocide by means of organizing exhibitions, holding public hearings, publishing books, etc.