KIEV, April 16 - Ukraine on Tuesday protested against "disrespectful" comments made by a top Russian TV host who compared chopping greens to the slaughter of Ukrainians by Soviet security services in the 20th century.

Ivan Urgant, a popular television personality who hosts a number of shows on Russia's Channel One station, made the remarks on "Smak", a weekend slot in which he interviews celebrities while cooking with them.

"I chopped these greens like a red commissar did the residents of a Ukrainian village," Urgant jested as he helped famous screenwriter Alexander Adabashyan prepare a soup on the program shown on Saturday, AFP reported.

"You have cleaned my blade," he then told Adabashyan, who responded: "I am just shaking off the villagers' remnants," as the audience laughed in the background.

While it was not clear what historical event Urgant was referring to, the remarks drew a storm of angry commentary in Ukraine, whose people suffered horribly at the hands of the Soviet authorities in the first half of the twentieth century.

Ukrainians were subject to mass repression by Stalin's NKVD security service and millions died in the early 1930s "Holodomor" famine brought on by Soviet mass collectivization, which nationalists consider a genocide.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry demanded an explanation from Channel One, Russia's most popular state-owned channel which is also available to cable subscribers in Ukraine.

"In the modern, civilized world, such jokes are considered bad taste and disrespectful toward the millions of victims of a totalitarian regime," said the Ukrainian foreign ministry.

Channel One later edited the remark out of the program in the version available on the website. But it was disseminated on YouTube and gathered many outraged comments.

Urgant later apologized to Ukrainians on Twitter for his "inappropriate comment" but jokingly added that henceforth he will only cook Ukrainian national dishes on the show and call his children Bogdan, a Ukrainian name. (nr/ez)