"...Chernobyl was a dark stain in the bleak history of the Soviet era.

But even darker crimes were perpetrated under Stalin, and earlier today I laid a wreath at the Memorial to the Victims of the Great Famine.

This was for me an emotional moment. My family was fortunate enough to escape Communism. Millions of Ukrainian children, women and men were not so lucky, and I know from talking to the Foreign Minister (Boris Tarasyuk), members of his own family were tragically affected by this. These people died in the great famine - not because of anything they had done, or even because there was no food, but simply because they were in the way.

No one who visits such a memorial can forget it. And no one who considers its eaning
can fail to understand why the Ukrainian people have made it clear that they will
never go back to a system in which the state has every freedom and the people
have none.

Ukraine's difficult past ensures that they way ahead will not be easy. But the United States will help Ukraine's reformers in every way. And because America wants for Ukraine what Ukraine wants for itself: a stable, prosperous, independent, and democratic future, firmly anchored in Euro-Atlantic institutions..."

Taken from a statement by United States Secretary of State
Madeleine K. Albright,
Kiev, Ukraine,
April 14, 2000
As Released by the Office of the Spokesman
U.S. State Department