President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked France on March 28 for recognizing the Holodomor as a genocide against the Ukrainian people.

168 deputies of the National Assembly, the lower house of the French parliament, voted in favor of the resolution, 2 voted against it.

The Holodomor, a man-made famine that took place between 1932-33, occurred during Joseph Stalin"s reign over the Soviet Union and caused an estimated 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainian deaths.

The Ukrainian government has been calling on the international community to recognize it as a genocide.

France joined Iceland, which recognized the Holodomor as a genocide on March 23, and Belgium, which did so on March 10. The Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, Ireland, Bulgaria, and a number of other countries also did so in 2022 and 2023. In December 2022, the European Parliament also officially recognized the Holodomor as a genocide and urged Russia to issue an official apology for the atrocities committed by the Soviet regime.