Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, Canadians joined Ukrainians around the world and remembered the horrors of the Holodomor genocide. On orders from Joseph Stalin's brutal Communist regime in 1932-33, millions of Ukrainians starved to death in the Holodomor.
I was honoured to gather alongside Canadians and Ukrainians and mourn the 85th commemoration of the Holodomor genocide. Two Winnipeg schoolteachers, Luba Fedorkiw and Orysya Petryshyn, are making sure the whole country remembers this tragedy. By developing bookmarks on lighting candles of promise around the world, they created a call to action that the horrors of the past would never be repeated.
However, this very weekend, as we remembered the victims of the Holodomor, the Kremlin violated international law again by attacking and seizing three Ukrainian naval ships. As we commemorate the Holodomor, let us not forget that Vladimir Putin continues to repeat history by violating Ukraine's territorial integrity, destroying Ukrainian lives and threatening their freedom.