The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has refused to recognize the Great Famine that struck the Soviet Union in the 1930s as genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Following debate that lasted for two hours, 21 PACE members voted for recognizing Holodomor (the word used by Ukrainians to label the famine) as a genocide of Ukrainians. Fifty-five voted against the corresponding amendment to the draft resolution on the issue, Interfax news agency reported.

The assembly pointed that the Great Famine took millions of lives in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.

It stressed that while the Great Famine may have had particularities in different regions of the Soviet Union, “the results were the same everywhere: millions of human lives were sacrificed to the fulfilment of the policies of the Stalinist regime.” The assembly called on the countries of Europe not to politicize the Stalin-era famine and urged the historians of the countries affected by the tragedy to carry out joint research to investigate the true circumstances of the Great Famine.