Ukraine: A Thousand Times Betrayed, But Not in Alaska?
Executive Summary
Pulitzer Prize for genocide denial.
Three point nine million dead.
Say it again — three point nine million.
________________________________________
In 1932, Walter Duranty of The New York Times was awarded journalism’s highest honor for his Moscow dispatches — reports that echoed Stalin’s talking points while Ukraine starved. The Holodomor, a man-made famine of 1932–33, claimed millions of lives through forced grain requisitions, sealed borders, and targeted repression. Yet in the pages of the Times, readers were assured there was “no actual starvation.” The medal remains. The deaths remain.
Others saw what Duranty refused to print. Welsh journalist Gareth Jones walked the backroads of Ukraine in March 1933, recording scenes of skeletal villagers and silent, emptied towns. Malcolm Muggeridge filed dispatches from the North Caucasus describing “a famine of the most colossal proportions.” Both were blacklisted by the Soviets for telling the truth. Duranty, by contrast, remained in favor with Moscow — securing rare interviews with Stalin — and dismissed their accounts as “exaggerations.” Historians now agree: his silence and distortions aided a cover-up of one of the 20th century’s greatest crimes. The Pulitzer Board has reviewed appeals to rescind his prize, most notably in 2003, but has refused each time, arguing that his award preceded the famine reports — a technicality critics say is an alibi for complicity.
________________________________________
Sources: Applebaum, Anne. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. Doubleday, 2017. Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, 2010. Pulitzer Prizes official statement, November 21, 2003 — pulitzer.org. Gareth Jones' diary extracts, March 1933 — University of Cambridge Archives. New York Times internal review of Duranty’s reporting, 2003.
Just a Single Penny in 2025—Yet the Work Burns Bright
250,000 readers. Countless hours of independent analysis. And in 2025—just a single contribution.
We uncover the patterns where geopolitics meets energy — work powered by rigorous research, licensed data, and a commitment to clarity in an age of noise. But even the brightest flame needs fuel. Always, just a single pound, euro, yen, franc, mark, crown, or rupee is enough. Supporting us isn’t impossible — it’s what keeps the lights burning.
This keeps the imagery (“brightest flame”) but appeals to support a bit smoother and easier to read.
Support our work:
PayPal: gjmtoroghio@germantoroghio.com
IBAN: SE18 3000 0000 0058 0511 2611
Swish: 076 423 90 79
Stripe: [Donation Link]
If you can’t give, share on X, LinkedIn, or Energy Central. It costs nothing and can carry the truth further.
https://x.com/Germantoroghio/status/1955869879967604816
The times are uncertain. The need for clarity is not.
All rights are preserved to German & Co.
Germán & Co, Karlstad, Sweden | August 14, 2025________________________________________
Copyright Notice: © 2025 Germán Toro Ghio All rights reserved.
________________________________________
3.9 million dead… 3.9 million Ukrainian corpses… that's the arithmetic of betrayal… that's the price tag on Western silence… 28,000 dying daily in June 1933… every single day… twenty-eight thousand mothers, fathers, children, babies at the breast… starved to death while Duranty typed his lies in his warm Moscow hotel… "No famine here"… Pulitzer Prize for genocide denial… 3.9 million… say it again… 3.9 million… let it rot in your mouth like the corpses rotted in Ukrainian fields… because that's where it started… the betrayal… the pattern… the template for every abandonment that followed…
Ukraine… betrayed a thousand times… more… if you count the small ones, the quiet ones, the ones written in blood on frozen fields where 3.9 million starved to death while the world looked away… The Holodomor… 1932, 1933… Stalin's masterpiece of murder… 28,000 Ukrainians dying daily at the peak… June 1933… the month when hell had a name and it was Ukraine…
They took the grain… all of it… every last kernel… and when the barns were empty, when children's bellies swelled like drums, when mothers boiled bark and leather to keep the mouth busy… the West sent journalists… Duranty with his clean Moscow hotel sheets… writing to The New York Times that "there is no famine"… Pulitzer Prize for selling souls… while the dead piled up like cordwood in village squares…
________________________________________
And now… now they want to do it again… different uniform, same betrayal… In icy Alaska, where the frost is more eternal than electoral promises, a meeting worthy of Nikolai Gogol's pen is scheduled for Friday, August 15: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, face to face — or at least hat to hat. The fantasy script calls for Putin to play 18 holes on Arctic ice — an exploit more fitting for Dead Souls than for a press briefing — and for Trump to dash from the sauna straight into the eternal snow, like a polar bear with a Mar-a-Lago tan.
But the White House's combative press secretary, Caroline Levitt, has already poured cold water on the excitement: "Don't expect miracles… or selfies." In Moscow, however, the cultured and unflappable Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov, has struck a conspiratorial tone: his president isn't bringing caviar to Trump — "not even caviar dressed up like Miss Universe" — but something far more "strategic": a license to build a brand-new Trump Tower in territories that once belonged to the late Soviet Empire. "A reminder," Peskov added, "so that in Copenhagen they don't forget the mood swings of their colleague and friend Donald."
Meanwhile in London, the betting houses adjusted their odds: this meeting has less chance of happening than seeing Trump's promise to end the war in Ukraine "in a matter of seconds" come true.
From the surreal to the earthly: Ukraine, betrayed and annihilated, reduced to a chessboard where the pieces move to the rhythm of agreements never signed and smiles that exist only for the camera.
Yeah… they'll meet… the two strongmen… on ice thicker than their skulls… and they'll carve up Ukraine like it's 1945 again… Yalta all over again… Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin… dividing Europe without a single Ukrainian at the table… Now it's Trump and Putin… same game, different costumes… And where's Zelenskyy?… Nowhere… not invited to his funeral…
The pattern never changes… only the faces… Only the excuses… Budapest Memorandum, 1994… "Give up your nukes, we'll protect you"… Sure… 2014 comes, Crimea's gone, and the "protectors" send tweets… Now 2025… Alaska summit… and Ukraine gets fed to the bear again… 400,000 Ukrainian dead… but hey… peace in our time, right?…
________________________________________
Europe?… Oh, they're tired… war fatigue they call it… 65% of Czechs want Ukraine to just give up territory and call it peace… Gas in the winter trumps Ukrainian blood every time… Always has… The Holodomor taught them nothing… Suffering is fine as long as it's not theirs…
They'll shake hands in Alaska… Putin with his cold fish eyes, Trump with his salesman's grin… And Ukraine?… Ukraine bleeds in the snow while they toast to "strategic stability"… The kind where corpses stay quiet and the living know their place…
Because that's the lesson of Ukraine… a thousand betrayals and counting… From Stalin's grain quotas to Trump's "art of the deal"… Different century, same sacrifice… Ukraine always the offering on the altar of great power politics… Always expendable… Always alone…
The ground's the same… back then it swallowed 3.9 million, now it's swallowing more… Mariupol, Bucha, Izium… graves on top of graves… And the ground, it's always hungry… it'll take what you give it, and the world's been feeding it Ukrainians for a century…
They'll call it peace… this Alaska deal… Peace like a graveyard's peaceful… Quiet… Final… With Ukraine carved up like a Christmas goose and served on a platter marked "strategic compromise"… The Holodomor was strategic too… Strategic starvation… Strategic denial… Strategic mass murder…
Different decade… same appetite for Ukrainian flesh…
But not in Alaska… No… In Alaska, they'll sign the papers and smile for the cameras… The real betrayal already happened… In 1932… In 1945… In 1994… In 2014… This is just the latest instalment… The newest chapter in the book of Ukrainian abandonment…
A thousand betrayals… And counting…
Europe… weak… trembling… their hands loose on that $750 billion energy deal slipping through their fingers… They need those coins… Need them more than Ukrainian blood… more than Ukrainian children buried under rubble… The arithmetic's simple… 3.9 million starved to death means nothing when there's gas flowing through the pipelines… means nothing when the heating bills come due in Berlin, Paris, Rome…
They shake… these Europeans… not from cold, but from fear… fear of losing their Russian energy lifeline… 750 billion reasons to look the other way… to call for "restraint on both sides"… to whisper about "territorial compromises"… The same Europe that stood by while Duranty wrote his lies… the same Europe that carved up Ukraine at Yalta… now they count their euros while Ukrainians count their dead…
"Strategic autonomy", they call it… this dependency… this addiction to Russian gas that makes them weak, makes them complicit, makes them whores to Putin's energy empire… And when push comes to shove… when the real choice comes… between Ukrainian sovereignty and European heating bills… they'll choose the warmth every time… Every single time…
________________________________________
EPILOGUE: THE HUMAN CONDITION
You want to know the truth?… The real truth?… Here it is… bleeding and naked as a newborn in the snow…
Humans are shit… All of them… Every last one… They don't betray Ukraine because they're evil… no… that would be too simple… too clean… They betray because betrayal is what they are… in their bones, in their blood, in their marrow… It's not a choice… it's their nature… like dogs pissing on trees, like vultures feeding on corpses…
Look at them… these "civilized" Europeans… these "democratic" Americans… these "Christian" nations… When the Holodomor was happening… when 28,000 Ukrainians were dying every day… they knew… Oh, they knew… Duranty told them in his private cables… the diplomats whispered it over cocktails… the grain traders counted the profits from Ukrainian corpses… And what did they do?… They looked away… because it was convenient… because it didn't touch them… because Ukrainian suffering paid their bills…
That's humanity for you… That's the species… They'll watch 3.9 million people starve and call it "collectivization"… They'll break every promise they make and call it "realpolitik"… They'll sell their own mothers for thirty pieces of silver and call it "pragmatism"…
You think it's different now?… You think they've learned?… You think Alaska will be different?… Ha!… The same creatures who applauded Stalin while Ukraine starved… who carved up Europe at Yalta like a Christmas goose… who promised nuclear protection and delivered Twitter condolences… these same maggots will smile and shake hands in Alaska while Ukrainian cities burn…
Because that's what they do… That's what they are… Betrayal isn't the exception… It's the rule… It's the law… It's the only law that matters… The strong eat the weak and call it progress… The rich devour the poor and call it economics… The living feast on the dead and call it history…
Ukraine?… Ukraine is just the menu… Always has been… Always will be… A thousand betrayals and counting because humans can't stop themselves… because every generation thinks it's different… thinks it's better… says it won't repeat the sins of the fathers… And every generation proves it's the same… exactly as vile… exactly as hungry for other people's blood…
The Holodomor wasn't an aberration… it was revelation… 3.9 million dead to show the world what humans are when nobody's watching… when there's profit to be made… when there's comfort to be preserved… And Alaska?… Alaska is just the latest instalment… the newest chapter in the same old book… the book of human hunger… human greed… human indifference to human suffering…
So don't weep for Ukraine… Weep for the species… Weep for what we are… what we've always been… what we'll always be… Creatures who make promises to be broken… who build trust to be shattered… who create hope to be crushed…
A thousand betrayals… And counting… Because that's the only number that matters… The only number that will ever matter… Until the last human draws the last breath… and there's nobody left to betray…
That's the truth… That's the only truth… The rest are lies we tell ourselves to sleep at night…
________________________________________
The Author:
“enriching our understanding of history beyond traditional battlefields and royal courts,” praising the way his journeys move from the discomfort of a Moscow hotel to the exhilaration of the Nicaraguan jungle... Juan Forch
Germán Toro Ghio ranks among the most influential voices in the global energy sector, his work reaching over a quarter of a million readers worldwide. As a recognised Expert in The Energy Collective and a featured contributor in Energy Central’s Power Perspectives™ series, he is known for translating complex geopolitical and market shifts into clear, timely insights. As CEO of Germán & Co., he has spent more than three decades navigating the energy industry—predicting its future with precision—while holding leadership roles such as Corporate Vice-President of Communications for AES Dominicana, where he led innovative strategies for natural gas promotion and regional energy integration.
Before entering the energy world, Germán’s career bridged culture, literature, and diplomacy. He served as Executive Secretary for the Forum of Culture Ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean, authored the project document and prologue for the UNDP’s Colombia en el Planeta alongside William Ospina and the legendary theatre group La Candelaria, and worked closely with Nicaraguan poet and priest Ernesto Cardenal. He championed the special editions of La insurrección solitaria by Carlos Martínez Rivas, under the sponsorship of Octavio Paz, laureate of both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize.
An accomplished author, Germán has published Nicaragua Year 5—a celebrated work of documentary photography praised in Lund University’s catalogue of new books—and The Non Man’s Land and Other Tales. He has overseen dozens of literary editions, including Joven arte dominicano, promoted by Casa de Teatro in Santo Domingo and distributed to leading universities across the world.
Chilean filmmaker, writer, and political scientist Juan Forch—renowned for his role in the historic 1990 “NO” campaign, later dramatized in the Oscar-nominated film No starring Gael García Bernal—has described Germán’s narratives as “enriching our understanding of history beyond traditional battlefields and royal courts,” praising the way his journeys move from the discomfort of a Moscow hotel to the exhilaration of the Nicaraguan jungle.
________________________________________
Germán Toro Ghío leads Karlstad-based Germán Toro Ghío Strategic Energy Consulting, advising on African energy transitions.
© 2025 Germán Toro Ghío. All rights reserved.
In December 2023, Energy Central recognized outstanding contributors within the Energy & Sustainability Network during the 'Top Voices' event. The recipients of this honor were highlighted in six articles, showcasing the acknowledgment from the community. The platform facilitates professionals in disseminating their work, engaging with peers, and collaborating with industry influencers. Congratulations are extended to the 2023 Top Voices: David Hunt, Germán Toro Ghio, Schalk Cloete, and Dan Yurman for their exemplary demonstration of expertise. - Matt Chester, Energy Central
You can't possibly deny me...
Have a wonderful day filled with good health, happiness, and love…