(OSV News) — Across the U.S. and Canada — and from Kyiv, Ukraine, to the Vatican — thousands have gathered in recent days to recall millions of Ukrainians killed in an artificial famine under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
The remembrances have taken place as Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, launched in 2014 and accelerated in 2022, approach the 12-year mark — with Ukrainian faithful recalling the chilling parallels between Stalin’s crimes and current atrocities inflicted by Russia under its president, Vladimir Putin, and with children bearing the greatest suffering, said several bishops.
“A new genocide is being inflicted upon the Ukrainian nation, 90 years after the last,” said Bishop Paul P. Chomnycky of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Stamford, Connecticut.
Bishop Chomnycky joined Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia, Ukrainian and U.S. officials, and hundreds of participants Nov. 22 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, which for some four decades has hosted an annual prayer service for victims of the Holodomor.
The gathering took place on Holodomor Remembrance Day, celebrated each year on the fourth Saturday of November.
Named for the Ukrainian words signifying “hunger” and “death,” the Holodomor claimed approximately 4 million Ukrainian lives — with some estimating as many as 7 million to 10 million slain — in tandem with a brutal Soviet policy of collectivization, theft, terror and abuse that sought to erase Ukrainian cultural and political identity.
The Holodomor has officially been recognized as a genocide by more than 30 countries, as well as by over 30 U.S. states.
The Trump administration has demanded an end to the current hostilities, advancing a controversial peace plan heavily favoring Russian interests. An initial version appeared to require Ukraine to cede swathes of its territories, where millions still live under Russian occupation, subject to documented religious repression and other human rights abuses.
U.S., European Union and Ukrainian officials have been meeting to discuss the plan, with the EU and Ukraine seeking greater balance of their interests in any diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
In two joint reports issued in 2022 and 2023, the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights declared Russia’s latest attacks had violated the Genocide Convention.
On Nov. 22, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin — celebrating a Mass at the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome for Holodomor victims — condemned ongoing Russian attacks on Ukraine, saying that “every action that deprives the civilian population of the possibility of living in dignity is an offense against humanity and an outrage against God, who is light, life, and mercy.
“We cannot remain indifferent to those who suffer from hunger, uncertainty, war, winter cold, imprisonment, and exile,” said the cardinal.
Speaking at the St. Patrick’s service, Bishop Chomnycky reflected that “it is always the children, the most innocent, who suffer the most from man’s acts of inhumanity towards his fellow man.”
That sentiment was echoed by a visibly moved Metropolitan Antony Scharba of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA.
He stressed that “the most vulnerable and most numerous” of the Holodomor’s victims were “the children of Ukraine.”
“One-third of those who perished in the Holodomor were young children, young lives extinguished before they could fully bloom,” said Metropolitan Antony.
He described the Holodomor as “an assault not only on bodies,” but on Ukrainian cultural and religious identity and, fundamentally, “our God-given dignity as human beings.”
Metropolitan Antony lamented the “children too young to understand why bread disappeared … who watched their parents grow weaker and weaker day by day,” with “families, once the strong and sacred foundation of Ukrainian village life … torn apart.”
Today, that same threat has resurged, Metropolitan Antony, Bishop Chomnycky and other speakers at the service warned.
Throughout the 11 years of its war on Ukraine, Russia has systematically deported at least 19,546 Ukrainian children, subjecting them to “patriotic reeducation” designed to erase their Ukrainian identity, as well as abuse and forced adoption by Russian families.
The actual number of deported children is feared to be far higher, with Russian child commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova — who along with Russian President Vladimir Putin is the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for the forced transfers — admitting that some 700,000 Ukrainian children were in Russian custody.
Russia’s systematic deportation of Ukrainian children — coordinated by multiple actors, and extensively documented in reports by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab — violates several instruments of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Genocide Convention, and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Previously, Mykola Kuleba — founder of child advocacy organization Save Ukraine and Ukraine’s child ombudsman from 2014-2021 — told OSV News that counting all Ukrainian children in Russian-occupied territories, the true number of endangered children is some 1.6 million. Some have been drafted into the Russian army upon reaching the age of 18.
Among the more than 750 children Kuleba has rescued was an orphan named Serhii, who last year at age 17 received a draft notice informing him to report to the Russian army immediately upon his 18th birthday.
“We concentrate on these innocents today, and we will remember them in prayer always,” said Metropolitan Antony. “Remember the children who are now held in captivity.”
“May the abducted children of Ukraine be returned quickly into the embrace of their loving families,” said Bishop Chomnycky.
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.
