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The 2004 Orange Revolution marked a nationalistic turn in the realm of memory in Ukraine, resulting in an exacerbation of the Holodomor, i.e. the Great 1932–33 Famine, defined as the “genocide of the Ukrainian people.” This paper examines Russian reactions to this policy of memory and the “Memory War” which ensued in 2008, following Kiev’s diplomatic offensive aiming at the recognition of the Holodomor as genocide on the international scene. This paper aims to demonstrate that the conflict reflected a confrontation between two incompatible conceptions of identity–namely, the affirmation by Yushchenko of a Ukrainian identity leaning towards Europe and detached from its Soviet and Eastern Slavic heritage vs. a Russian identity advocated by Putin, rehabilitating to a large extent the Soviet memorial heritage and insisting on the cultural proximity of the two “brotherly peoples.”