EU Parliament: Russia is a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’; Pope compares war with ‘Holodomor genocide’
The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism because of Moscow’s strikes on civilian targets, at the same time as Kyiv’s military administration reported three people were killed and half a dozen injured in a Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s capital.
“The deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes,” the Parliament said.
The resolution was adopted with 494 votes in favor, 58 against and 44 abstentions. [Continue reading…]
Pope Francis on Wednesday compared the war in Ukraine to the “terrible Holodomor genocide” of the 1930s, when the policies of the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, caused a devastating famine in Ukraine.
The pontiff’s comparison of Moscow’s attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine to Stalin’s decision to let millions in Ukraine starve represents one of his strongest condemnations yet of the Russian invasion.
“Let us pray for peace in the world, and for an end to all conflicts, with a special thought for the terrible suffering of the dear and martyred people of Ukraine,” Pope Francis said during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square. “And let us think of war-torn Ukraine.”
The pontiff then asked that people join Ukraine this Saturday in commemorating “the terrible Holodomor genocide, the extermination by hunger of 1932-33 artificially caused by Stalin.”
“Let us pray for the victims of this genocide and let us pray for all Ukrainians, the children, the women and the elderly, the babies who are today suffering the martyrdom of aggression,” he said.
Ukrainian historians argue that Stalin, as head of the Soviet Union, used a famine brought on by the Soviets’ forced collectivization of farms to crush Ukrainian aspirations for independence. The famine began in Kazakhstan and southern Russia but was most devastating in Ukraine, where entire villages were left to starve. [Continue reading…]