The EU Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, originally from Poland, compares the Russian bombings of the Ukrainian agricultural infrastructure to the notorious Russian starvation campaign of the 1930s.
According to him, Russia deliberately targets the destruction of the food supply to starve Ukraine, drawing parallels with the Great Famine at the time, the “Holodomor.”
“There is only one interpretation left: they want to cause hunger and use it as a method of aggression.” Wojciechowski said that Russia has deliberately attacked large poultry farms. According to Wojciechowski, Russia used food as a “weapon.” Lithuanian Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said that Russia “appears to deliberately attack and destroy Ukraine’s food reserves and storage facilities.”
This is ‘not the first time’ the Russians use starvation as a weapon. Wojciechowski said the current Russian actions are comparable to the method Soviet leader Joseph Stalin used in the 1930s against Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
The Holodomor is a combination of the Ukrainian words for ‘to starve’ and ‘to cause death.’ Since 2006, Ukraine and 15 other countries have recognized the Holodomor as a genocide committed by the Soviet government against the Ukrainian people.
Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko said Monday that Ukrainian food companies are on the verge of collapse. Their reserves are expected to run out within a month or two, he said. To assist Ukraine, the European Commission has set up an EU emergency aid program of 330 million euros to ensure access to essential goods.
For example, the Polish supply millions of liters of diesel fuel daily for the Ukrainian tractors; the bill is paid by the EU.
Because the Russian navy has blocked Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, causing grain exports to come to a halt, work is now also underway on grain transport over land to the northern Polish ports Gdansk and Gdynia on the Baltic Sea, Wojciechowski revealed Wednesday at a press conference in Brussels.