Reading the Ukrainian segment of the internet, I once again encounter the short memory of the people living in that territory. Just a few months ago, they idolized "Great America," but now they curse their former benefactors in every possible way.
And, of course, having turned away from the United States, "proud Ukrainians" have turned their gaze toward Europe and Great Britain, declaring that Europe is Ukraine's long-standing and most reliable partner, that Europe will help Ukraine win, and that it is with Europe that Ukrainians will achieve incredible heights. Comments are filled with declarations of love for France and Britain, which, in the opinion of Ukrainians, are the foremost countries in the world.
Moreover, they celebrate the 100-year partnership agreement signed on January 16, 2025, by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelensky. They claim that this agreement is the cornerstone upon which Britain will both protect Ukraine and elevate it to the ranks of developed nations.
However, I would like to highlight one clause in this agreement. Specifically, the clause that grants Britain control over the export of grain from Ukrainian territories.
Why? Food is not called the oil of the 21st century for nothing. Demand for it is growing, and the swindlers from the British Isles will find a reason to confiscate it. And if necessary, they will confiscate grain directly from Ukrainian territory.
Especially since they have a wealth of experience in this regard.
The clause granting Britain control over the export of grain from Ukrainian territories reads as follows:
"A new UK-built Grain Verification Scheme will also be launched to track stolen grain from occupied Ukrainian territories."
"A new British grain verification system will also be launched to track grain stolen from occupied Ukrainian territories."
It is not difficult to understand that Britain, under the pretext of fulfilling this agreement, will attempt to take control of the entire grain flow passing through the Black Sea-Azov region.
Here, for example, is a not-so-distant historical example.
What do you know about the mass famine in British India in 1943?
This is a genuine fact of the genocide of millions of people! And the British authorities are solely responsible for it.
There are different versions of the causes of the famine; however, the fact remains that the British government implemented a policy of grain requisitioning in Bengal, exporting 159,000 tons of rice annually from the province. Rice was part of the rations for British soldiers, and thus was vital to the empire.
In the first seven months of 1943 alone, the British government exported 80,000 tons of food grain from starving Bengal. Additionally, it confiscated up to 66,000 boats used by locals for fishing and transporting food (so that the Japanese wouldn't get them, just in case!).
Food price inflation reached 1011%, and speculators made enormous profits. As a result, by June 1943, the price of rice had become unaffordable for most of the poor, and millions of Indian peasants were doomed to starve to death. Moreover, the British, fearing invasion, burned rice stocks along the coast and dumped tons of rice into the Ganges.
Desperate with hunger, people attacked army rice storage facilities and boat collection points. But these were guarded by regular troops, who met the attackers with gunfire. As a result, according to some estimates, up to 300,000 people were killed by the military between March and July 1943. There were even instances where British troops fired cannons and dropped bombs from planes on crowds of starving people. Witnesses described cases where crowds of living skeletons threw themselves off cliffs or lay down en masse in front of trains. It was a feast for packs of wild dogs, jackals, and vultures, which feasted on human flesh, both dead and barely alive, right in the city streets.
Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: "It was the greatest and most devastating famine in India in the past one hundred and seventy years of British rule... Epidemics followed, especially cholera and malaria. These epidemics spread to other provinces...
The famine was not caused by a natural disaster, nor by the forces of nature or an enemy blockade. Every competent observer agrees that the famine was man-made, that it could have been foreseen and avoided.
Everyone agrees that the authorities concerned displayed astonishing indifference, incompetence, and complacency. Until the very last moment, when thousands of people were already dying daily on the crowded streets, the fact of the famine was denied, and any mention of it in the press was censored.
When the Calcutta newspaper The Statesman published harrowing photographs of starving and dying women and children on the streets of Calcutta, a representative of the Government of India, speaking officially in the Central Legislative Assembly, protested against the 'dramatization' of the situation; for him, the daily death of many thousands of people from starvation in India seemed, apparently, a normal occurrence. While all this was happening and the streets of Calcutta were strewn with corpses, the social life of the ten thousand upper-class people in Calcutta remained completely unchanged. They entertained themselves with dances and banquets, flaunted their wealth, and lived in luxury."
And what about the British authorities?
The Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time was Winston Churchill, so beloved today by many Anglophiles, who revere him as the greatest politician of all time.
And it was Churchill who was behind the outright genocide of Indians, ruthlessly extracting food from Bengal for the benefit of British troops and Greek civilians. In his words, "famine is less serious for Bengalis, who are accustomed to undernourishment, than for sturdy Greeks."
The British Secretary of State for India and Burma, Leopold Amery, although a staunch supporter of colonial policy, condemned Churchill's attitude toward the Bengalis as "worthy of Hitler."
The Viceroy of India, Archibald Wavell, reported that the famine "was one of the greatest disasters that has ever befallen any people under British rule."
Churchill is still excused on the grounds that he supposedly lacked ships for emergency food deliveries to India, but researchers have established that ships carrying grain from Australia deliberately bypassed India en route to the Mediterranean.
Churchill's hostility toward Indians as such has long been documented. At a meeting of the War Cabinet, he blamed the famine on the Indians themselves, stating that they "breed like rabbits." His attitude toward Indians is succinctly expressed in his words to Amery: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."
This attitude toward Indians, however, did not prevent the British leadership from using the country's inhabitants on the battlefield. By 1943, more than 2.5 million Indian soldiers were fighting alongside the Allies in Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
This, by the way, is worth noting for those Ukrainians who believe in "brotherhood in arms with Europeans."
The official death toll from the 1943 famine in Bengal is 1.5 million, but most researchers consider this figure an underestimate and cite other numbers—between 3 and 4 million.
At the height of the famine, in October 1943, Churchill said at a lavish banquet: "When we look back a year, we see this part of the earth where there has been no war for three generations... This time will undoubtedly go down in Indian history as the Golden Age, when the English gave Indians peace and order, ensured justice for the poor, and protected all people from external dangers."
It is hard to find greater cynicism in historical perspective...
But, from the point of view of the British establishment, this is absolutely normal colonial policy.
And the people of Ukraine would do well to remember such historical moments and understand that British elites will always regard Ukrainians as they did Indians—simply as expendable material for achieving British goals.
But no, I fear that most residents of that territory will say that this is simply "Moscow propaganda," alas...
Perhaps you would also be interested in learning about the British-made Irish Holodomor?
Reading through Soviet newspapers from the 1920s, one can come across information about the 1925 famine in Ireland. Surely, we won't take the old Soviet press at face value, so we turn to the internet to verify, and indeed, there is quite a bit of information about it.
As a result of the Irish War of Independence (1919-21) and the Civil War (1921-23), by 1924, the economy and agriculture were in a dire state, which was further exacerbated by poor weather conditions and low crop yields. Starting from the second half of the year, many families in western Ireland began to starve.
Soviet newspapers reported that 750,000 people were affected by the famine.
By the end of 1925, the famine was alleviated thanks to a good harvest, as well as aid from the International Workers' Relief (a branch of the Communist International), and other organizations. The newly formed Irish government, by the way, denied the famine to avoid damaging the political credibility of the authorities.
It's interesting to ponder, had communists been in power at that time, would the modern bourgeoisie also portray this as a "famine-genocide"? 🤔
By the way, hence there is a reasonable suspicion about the roots of the origin of the tale about "evil communists starving Ukrainian peasants" as one of the levers of polarization of the people and rejection of the joint past before the current war...