President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and senior officials took part in the official commemorations outside the Holodomor Memorial in Kyiv's Lavrska Street.
In his speech, the president spoke about "the genocide of the Ukrainian people by Stalin's totalitarian regime". He said that although historians argue about the number of people who died as a result of the famine, it ranges from 4 million to 8 million people, which is "comparable with Ukraine's losses in World War II".
The traditional campaign "Light up the candle" began at 4 p.m. after a minute's silence.
The Holodomor is the genocide of the Ukrainian nation in 1932-1933, committed by the leadership of the Soviet Union with the aim of pacifying the Ukrainians, wiping out Ukrainian resistance to the regime and attempts to build a Ukrainian state independent of Moscow. In 2006, the Law of Ukraine "On the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine" recognised the Holodomor as the act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
In 2010, Kyiv's court of appeal proved the genocidal nature of the Holodomor, the intention of Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich, Postyshev, Chubar, Khatayevich, Kosior to destroy part of the Ukrainian nation.
In 1932-1933, from 4 million to 8 million people were killed on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR and up to 3 million Ukrainians outside its borders, in the regions that were historically populated by Ukrainians: Kuban, Northern Caucasus, Lower Volga and Kazakhstan.