MOSCOW, March 6 (RIA Novosti) - Moscow believes the issue of Ukraine's 1932-1933 famine should not be used for political goals, a Russian envoy to the United Nations said on Thursday.

The famine, known as Holodomor, took the lives of 7 to 10 million Ukrainians as a result of forced collectivization, accompanied by devastating purges of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, religious leaders and politicians under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Valery Loshchinin, envoy to the UN office in Geneva, told the seventh session of the UN Human Rights Council: "We urge against political speculation on subjects related to the general, sometimes tragic, historical past, and against using this for a voluntary interpretation of the rules of international law."

The diplomat also said that Ukraine's Holodomor could not be recognized as genocide under the 1948 Convention on Genocide.

Ukraine has been seeking international recognition of Holodomor as an act of genocide against its nation. Russia has officially denied that the Soviet-era forced famine was a genocide.

Ukraine's parliament declared Holodomor an act of genocide at a session in November 2006, and 11 countries gave their recognition.

The country traditionally commemorates victims of political repression on November 25.