KIEV, April 27 – President Viktor Yanukovych on Tuesday reversed Ukraine’s official stance on Holodomor, a manmade “famine” in the early 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians, calling it a “consequence” of totalitarian regime, not genocide.

The shift reflects official position of Russia, which has been contesting the stance of Yanukovych’s predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, who had labeled the famine as the genocide against the Ukrainian people.