31 January, 14:56
In the spring of 1933, a nineteen-year-old woman from Moscow was traveling to the sea through Kharkiv. From the train window, she saw living skeletons. Emaciated children with swollen bellies stretched their bony hands toward the cars. Passengers closed the curtains. The locomotive whistled. The train moved on – toward the sea and apricots.
Historian Sergei Medvedev told this story about his grandmother. Even decades later, she spoke of what she had seen only in whispers.
Between seven and ten million Ukrainians died of starvation in 1932-1933. Moscow organized this famine deliberately. Grain was seized. Escape routes were blocked. Information was suppressed. The world remained silent. Muscovites closed their curtains.
In the winter of 2025-2026, Russia is exterminating Ukraine again.
Instead of seizing bread – strikes on energy infrastructure in the middle of freezing weather. Instead of hunger – cold. The method is different. The goal is the same. Break the people.
In Ukrainian cities, there is no electricity for sixteen hours a day. Buildings freeze through. Pipes burst. Elevators stop. The metro doesn't run. Hospitals operate at their limit. Army tents for warming appear in courtyards. Millions of people are on the edge of physical survival.
Russian press celebrates. Z-bloggers publish reports about freezing Kyiv. This is their compensation for four years of humiliation at the front, where Ukrainians stopped the Russian army with their bare hands. Now Russians take revenge on civilians. Just like a hundred years ago, they experience delight in Ukrainian suffering.
History repeats itself. First as tragedy. Then as farce.
What makes it a farce is not the diminished cruelty of the aggressor. What makes it a farce is the West's position. Ninety years ago, the world didn't know about the Holodomor – information was blocked. Today, the world knows everything. Every strike on energy infrastructure is broadcast live. Every frozen city is shown on the news.
And the world closes the curtains again.
Ukrainians don't know how to turn their grief into a show. They don't create spectacular footage for CNN from every destroyed building. They simply hold on. At the front, they contain the onslaught. In the rear, they survive without heat and light. They remember how the fall of the Ukrainian People's Republic ended a hundred years ago. They remember the price of capitulation – the Holodomor.
Russia methodically pursues one goal. Destroy the people who refuse to be part of the empire. Who remember. Who resist.
Genocide is happening now. In the center of Europe. In the winter of 2026.
The West watches. Expresses concern. Discusses the next package of sanctions. Closes the curtains and goes to its own sea.
The tradition of genocide continues. So does the tradition of silent observation.