Weaponising Starvation

On the anniversary of Stalin's manufactured famine in Ukraine, Paul Niland looks back at Russia's history of using starvation as a war tactic

Statue dedicated to the child victims of the Holodomor at the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide, opened in Kyiv in 2008. Photo: Nazar Furyk/ZUMA Wire/Alamy

A recent investigation by the human rights law firm Global Rights Compliance has found evidence that in the months before Vladimir Putin ordered his armies to invade all of Ukraine, a plan was put in place to steal vast quantities of Ukrainian agricultural produce as the invasion unfolded, with a goal of starving large numbers of Ukrainian citizens into submission.

There is speculation as to whether this premeditated intent to cause a famine in Ukraine could lead to a second set of war crimes charges against Putin, to add to his existing arrest warrant for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.

The specifics of the starvation plan involved the purchase of the equipment necessary to realise it and included the purchase by a Russian defence contractor of three brand new 170 metre bulk carrier cargo ships which would have facilitated the theft of Ukrainian grain “on an unprecedented scale” according to the report.