And so, Russia seems to want to divide Ukraine to become like that also. Like East Ukraine and West Ukraine, or South Ukraine, North Ukraine. (Yes, Master. Right, Master.) Unless Europe wants to stand by and wait for that to happen or NATO is just making all kinds of lousy excuses to watch Ukrainians suffer, then they don’t have to do anything. And wait until Ukraine is lost. (Yes, Master.) I’m worried about Europe, not just Ukraine. That’s why I said NATO has to come in with force to flush Russian soldiers out because they don’t belong there. They don’t belong in Europe.
Under Stalin, they controlled the peasants, the farming. They did not let the people have anything more than what Russia ruled. (Yes, Master.) So, many of the people did not have enough food to eat. And Russia sent their police or brigade, special units, to always go into Ukraine, to take their things. And they went into their homes all the time, different houses and took out the foodstuff if they thought it was too much food for that family. (Yes, Master.) And even then, even at that time, if somebody supposedly had more food than they were supposed to, according to Russian law at that time, then they were committing a crime. (Oh, right. Yes.)
And then the farmers, the peasants who were hungry and maybe kept some food, even hiding it, the Russians would take it out and they would even kill them. (Oh, wow.) They killed them by firing squad for “stealing” or keeping, hiding even, just a sack of wheat. (Oh, my gosh. Wow.) They called it stealing from the state. (Yes, Master.) So, it’s because of hunger. The rural population, at that time, never had sufficient food to feed themselves. (Oh, I see.) Imagine that? (Yes, Master.)
So, of course, according to that situation, starvation was massive, was huge, in 1933. (So tragic.) But even then, Moscow at that time did not provide any extra relief for the famine, for the starvation at that time. And at the same time, the Soviet Union exported more than a million tons of grain to other countries, to the West, while their own people starved in Ukraine. (Wow. Oh, God.) Their food became the state’s food. (Yes, Master.) It was stored in any silos, and it became state-owned property. (Right.)
“Media Report from BBC News – Feb. 12, 2022, Clive Myrie (m): Well, Russia has long sought to determine the destiny of Ukraine under Soviet communism. As many as four million died of hunger when Moscow forced people from small holdings to disastrously inefficient collective farms. The bitterness remains to this day.
Fergal Keane (m): As the Kremlin's choirs praised Stalin, the world was told of a happy land.
TV broadcast (m): And today it is above all the granary of Eastern Europe, with the black earth bringing forth millions of acres of wheat.
Fergal Keane (m): But 95-year-old Petro Mohilat knows what a lie that was. Forced collectivization of farms brought starvation and terror to his family.
Petro VO translation (m): It was very scary. There was a brigade with pitchforks who came to every house searching for bread. I was five at that time. We locked the door and all the windows but they used crowbars to come inside and then they went to all the barns trying to find any buried bread. Fergal Keane (m): Food was seized to punish peasants who resisted collectivization. It's thought up to four million people died in what Ukraine calls the Holodomor, killing through hunger. Russia denies the famine was a deliberate attempt to break the independent spirit of Ukrainians. Olexandra Zakharova, aged 98, remembers the corpses of the starved.
Olexandra VO translation (f): What could I see? I saw people who died. They made a big pit and threw all the bodies there. My father went to Western Ukraine taking everything good from our home to exchange for food but he got nothing. You can say I had a life but it was no life.
Fergal Keane (m): Near the family home there's a mass grave from the famine era. It's also an important part of modern Ukraine's story of origin – this idea of a nation in the 1930s suffering the oppression of a dictatorship based in Moscow. This old steel door here?
Dr. Drobovych (m): Yes.
Fergal Keane (m): Ukrainians who resisted ended up in places like this.
Dr. Drobovych (m): Some historians say that five or ten thousand people (were) killed here in this basement.
Fergal Keane (m): Interrogation cells of the secret police in Kyiv. It's just impossible to imagine what went through people's minds as they came through that door into this place.
Dr. Drobovych (m): Yeah. Pain.
Fergal Keane (m): Investigation of Stalin's crimes has been suppressed in Russia.
Dr. Drobovych (m): They protect Stalin. They hide (the) truth. They attack us. They don't recognize us like (an) independent country. Why? We don't understand why.”
The farmers produced food and the state took it all, and gave them only very little, not enough. If they took a little bit more, then they’d be shot dead by firing squad. Even just one bag of wheat. (Yes, Master. Yes. Horrendous. That’s shocking.)
So, everywhere Russia went all these decades is just starvation, destruction, demolition, and murdering people in different types of ways. Either shooting them, or just starving them to death. (Oh, God. So bad. Terrible.)
Yeah, and everywhere is like devastated. (Yes.) And that’s how they conquer many other countries. They even say that people who take food like that, they call them “terrorists,” (Wow. Oh, gosh.) “Food terrorists.” (Wow.) They say, “Food terrorism must be stopped.”
So, five million people died, at least. (Wow.) And most of those were Ukrainian people. (So evil.) And Russia, since decades already, brought a lot of Russian people into Ukraine, to make it more Russian, and easier to control. (Oh, right, Master. Yes, Master.) Then they wanted to Russianize all the Ukrainians and delete their identity at that time. (Yes, Master.)
So, if Europe or NATO wants that to happen again, then they will just stand by doing nothing, and wait until that happens. And if Ukraine is lost, the whole Europe will be lost, sooner or later. (Yes, Master. That’s right.)
Oh, man, oh, man. And now you can see starvation already has begun in many countries in the world already, due to Russia’s war in Ukraine, because they cannot export all this grain that they have. (That’s right.) And it will stand there and get rotten if it cannot go out to other countries. (Yes. Yes, Master.) And Russia already stole their grain and sold it elsewhere. And then, of course, with those under Russian occupation, or Russia-backed separatists, all this farm produce will go away, exported by Russia elsewhere. (Yes, Master. Right.) So, it’s already begun, the starvation of the world now, not just of Ukraine like last time. (Yes, Master.)
“Media Report from On Demand News – June 12, 2022, Zelenskyy: Ukrainian agricultural exports play a stabilizing role in the global market, and Russia must be held accountable for provoking a new wave of migration against Europe, using the people of both Africa and Asia simply as hostages.”
“Media Report from Belsat TV – May 30, 2022, Elena (f): This is nothing but an ordinary blackmail, because, without the export of the Ukrainian food, hundreds of millions of people are in danger of starvation.
Reporter (f): Due to the war in Ukraine, the number of people suffering from hunger across the world could rise to 323 million. This was stated by David Beasley, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme.
Guterres: Russia's invasion of its neighbor has effectively ended its food exports.
Reporter (f): The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that as of the 21st of May, Russia had blocked 22 million tons of food in Ukrainian ports, gradually stealing it, taking it out, and trying to sell it.
Reporter (m): Here is a Ukrainian car standing in Dzhankoi and being reloaded into a Russian car. This is how the product gets into the Russian Federation.
Reporter (f): Ukraine is the fourth-largest producer of grain in the world. Prices of cereal products are soaring. Experts are anticipating the worst food crisis in the world. Within two or three months, as experts predict, the countries of North Africa and the Middle East will run out of grain stock. In the meantime, the stolen Ukrainian grain goes to Syria. Egypt and Lebanon have rejected such deliveries.”
It’s like a global Holodomor famine. (Oh. Yes.) So everywhere Russia went up to now is like that. My God. They don’t have any souls, these leaders of Russia, I mean these wicked leaders. Some Russian leaders were probably good before. (Yes, Master.) But up to now, I mean, since communism took over Russia, everywhere they went is all bloody. (Yes, Master.) Blood everywhere – blood and destruction.
Even like Berlin – after the war, Germany became separated into West and East Berlin, and West Berlin continued to prosper and progress and repair all the war-damaged cities. But East Berlin – no. It was short of many things, and Russia did not help much. They were short of toilet paper even. They were queuing for it. (Wow. Oh.)
I was in Berlin, in East Berlin, I went there with some friends. They invited me. So, I went with them to East Berlin and it looked so miserable to me. I felt very miserable. I felt they were miserable. (Oh.) And the guards, and the police, and all that, their faces were like stone. You don’t feel a human connection with them. It’s kind of scary.
I did not want to go there anymore, after that. (Right, Master. Understand.) But the private people, the people that my friends knew, they’re nice. It’s just that the energy, the atmosphere was not so nice. Many ruined buildings or some even important buildings were so ruined and not repaired. (Yes, understand.) Many houses were like half broken or dilapidated. Looked very ruined from outside. (Yes.) The walls, and all that were not all nice and all bright like West Berlin and West Germany. (Yes, Master.) And the standard of living there was not good compared to the West Germany that I knew. (Yes, Master.)
And so, Russia seems to want to divide Ukraine to become like that also. Like East Ukraine and West Ukraine, or South Ukraine, North Ukraine. (Yes, Master. Right, Master.) Unless Europe wants to stand by and wait for that to happen or NATO is just making all kinds of lousy excuses to watch Ukrainians suffer, then they don’t have to do anything. And wait until Ukraine is lost. (Yes, Master.) I’m worried about Europe, not just Ukraine. That’s why I said NATO has to come in with force to flush Russian soldiers out because they don’t belong there. They don’t belong in Europe. (Yes, that’s right.)
