The Russian language no longer enjoys protected status in Ukraine. What the law promulgated by Zelenski provides
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law on Friday withdrawing the status of the Russian language as a protected language in Ukraine, where it remains the main language used by part of the population, despite a decline recorded since the Russian invasion, reports AFP, according to News.ro.
“The President of Ukraine signed the law (…), an important decision to protect the Ukrainian linguistic space and fulfill our European obligations,” said the President of the Parliament, Ruslan Stefanciuk, on Facebook.
“The language of an aggressor state cannot benefit from protection tools designed to support the languages of indigenous peoples and national communities,” he said, citing “Ukraine's linguistic justice and security.”
This law withdraws from the Russian language the protections provided by the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages, a Council of Europe treaty that Ukraine had ratified.
The measure does not make Russian illegal in Ukraine, but the state is no longer obliged, in particular, to provide public services in Russian and may restrict teaching in that language.
According to official figures, almost a third of the Ukrainian population had Russian as their main language before the war, especially in the east and south of the country.
According to surveys, the use of the Russian language has decreased since the beginning of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but the linguistic situation is complicated by the fact that Russia occupies 19% of the territory.
Tensions over the status of the Russian language were one of the reasons cited for the Moscow-led separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
