applause. for the audience, which includes lots of local ukrainians, it was a poignant evening. it was very touching because from my opinion, a holodomor is one of the most terrible parts of ukrainian history. i thought it was tremendous and i couldn t believe that i d never heard of this atrocity. it s been an intense five weeks for this company of performers, juggling jobs, family life, as well as rehearsals. so it s a testament to their resilience that they ve come together in a new land to tell powerful stories of home. mike cowan was the reporter and producer. and there s a longer version of his film on bbc iplayer. it s called playing for ukraine . and i ve been talking to the exiled mayor of the city of mariupol in southern ukraine which was taken
yurii s job is to get this performance from the rehearsal room and onto the stage injust four weeks. the play focuses on ukrainian woman maria, charting her life from birth to death. it s the story of how russian occupance break her life. like, break ukraine. and this story will be about the hardest page of our history. i mean holodomor. the holodomor, literally translated as to kill by hunger , was a soviet engineered famine of the early 1930s. being the largest grain producer in the soviet union, ukraine was subjected to higher grain quotas than other regions, leading to fewer crops for ukrainians and causing mass starvation of the population. while estimates vary, academics put the death toll at a minimum of 3.5 million people.
Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal held meetings with the leadership of the Italian parliament and, as a result, announced "unconditional support" for Ukraine in both chambers.