President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has emphasized that the 1932-1933 Holodomor is genocide for Ukraine, not a social or economic tragedy, as someone is trying to present it.

"A lot of people were destroyed. A lot of things were taken from them — their homes, their land, their cattle, everything was taken from them. And if they were not providing their assets, then they were killed. They were shot. Millions of people died. Many countries have recognized that Holodomor is a genocide. And I know that Israel understands this, and understands that Ukraine has recognized the Holocaust as genocide. For Ukraine, it’s not a social or economic tragedy. It’s a genocide. Millions of Ukrainians were destroyed," he said in an interview with The Times of Israel posted on Sunday.

Zelensky is confident that in the future the world will recognize that Holodomor is a huge tragedy for Ukraine, which in fact was the destruction of Ukrainian people.

"There was a lot of silence in different media because of the policies of the USSR, because the USSR was hiding all the information. It was hiding the records, it was hiding the locations of mass graves. There was not enough information about this. That's how the history was made. So we understand that there are different histories. But I am sure that in the future, people will understand what is the history of Ukraine and what are the real facts. Millions of Ukrainians were destroyed during Holodomor," he stressed.

Zelensky noted that a lot of good things happened during the USSR period, there were many people of world renown who did many wonderful things, but there were also many tragedies such as Holodomor.

"You know, today we still don't have statistics to tell us how many Jews died [in the Soviet era] and what exactly happened to them — how many of them were killed, how many of them were taken away, exiled. How many of them became dissidents… Take the case of Andrei Sakharov, who managed to tell his story to the world. But how many Jews did not manage to do that? We do not have this history," the president said.