32nd State: Wyoming Recognizes the Holodomor as Genocide of the Ukrainian People

Wyoming has become the 32nd state in the United States to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-33 as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. The state has also declared November as a month of remembrance for it. This information was announced by the Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova.

"The state of Wyoming has become the 32nd state to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-33 as a genocide of the Ukrainian people and has declared November as a month of remembrance for the Ukrainian Holodomor-genocide. I thank Governor Mark Gordon for his solidarity with Ukraine. I also thank the Ukrainian community across all states for their active campaign to honor the memory of the Holodomor victims through educational events about this terrible crime committed by the Soviet regime against Ukrainians 90 years ago," the ambassador stated.

Markarova invites everyone to join the candlelight remembrance ceremony in Washington on Saturday, November 25, at the Memorial to the Victims of the Holodomor. In early November, the Holodomor was recognized as genocide in the U.S. states of Washington, Maryland, and Arizona.

"The Embassy of Ukraine in the USA, in collaboration with the U.S. Holodomor Committee, actively works on expanding the geography of recognizing the Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people," Oksana Markarova noted at that time.

To date, approximately thirty countries around the world, including the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, have recognized the Holodomor as a genocide. These countries include Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Georgia, Ecuador, Estonia, Iceland, Canada, Colombia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Moldova, Germany, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, the United States, Hungary, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Estonia.

In the 1930s, Ukraine experienced a wave of mass protests against forced collectivization, during which private farms were liquidated, and people's property was expropriated in favor of the so-called collective farms, or "kolkhozes." In Ukraine, where private property was widespread, over 4,000 mass protests were recorded within a year, involving around 1.2 million people.

In response to the disobedience in Ukraine during 1932-1933, an artificial mass famine was created. Under Moscow's orders, grain, cereals, food products, and livestock were confiscated in Ukrainian populated areas, and residents were prohibited from leaving their places of residence. The blocked and food-deprived people began to die en masse from hunger.