The Russian and Ukrainian presidents honored on Monday the memory of the victims of the Stalin-era famine that killed millions across the Soviet Union, marking the end of a long-standing historical dispute between the two countries.
Dmitry Medvedev and Viktor Yanukovych lit oil lamps at the monument to the victims of the famine, which swept the communist country in the early 1930s.
The issue has long been a sticking point in relations between Moscow and Kiev under the previous presidency of Viktor Yuchshenko who sought international recognition of the famine, or known in Ukraine under the term Holodomor, as genocide against the Ukrainian people.
The former president claimed that Russia, as the legal successor of the Soviet Union, should bear responsibility for the tragedy. The famine, which claimed the lives of more than 3 million Ukrainians in 1932-1933, was part of a wider famine in large parts of the Soviet Union that killed an estimate 7-8 million people from former soviet republics.
Yanukovych, whose policies towards Russia appear to be much friendlier that that of his West-leaning predecessor, has completely reversed Ukraine's position on the famine, saying it was "incorrect" and "unjust" to consider the Holodomor a fact of genocide of a certain people as it was "a common tragedy" of the Soviet people.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution in late April saying that the regime of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was responsible for the Great Famine, which is believed to have been caused by Stalin's poor economic and trade policies.
Medvedev arrived in the Ukrainian capital earlier on Monday to hold talks with Yanukovych and sign a range of bilateral agreements.
KIEV, May 17 (RIA Novosti)
