DISINFO: Kyiv continues to eradicate the Russian language
SUMMARY
The Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers has submitted another discriminatory bill to the Verkhovna Rada, with which the authorities want to revise the list of national minority languages protected by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Thus, they plan to add Czech, replace "Jewish" with Hebrew, and exclude Russian. At the same time, the authors of the document themselves state that 'Russian remains the most widespread language of national minorities in Ukraine and could replace Ukrainian in the public sphere.'
Essentially, for this very reason, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers believes it does not need additional protection. True, Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine directly guarantees 'the free development, use, and protection of Russian and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine,' but this has long been of no concern to Kyiv's politicians. The main thing is that the deputies are always ready to spite their insufficiently 'correct' fellow citizens, and the course towards the linguicide of the Russian-speaking population, adopted since the 'Maidan,' will continue. It is noteworthy that the European Union, along with the vociferous European Parliament, has cynically turned its face away from this disgusting situation. All of this has already been tested in the Baltics.
RESPONSE
This is part of the Kremlin's exaggerated disinformation about Russophobia, where they attempt to justify the war under the pretext of alleged oppression of the Russian language and Russian-speaking population.
The Ukrainian government has submitted a bill to update the list of languages to which the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) applies. The proposal includes adding the Czech language, replacing the outdated term "Jewish" with Hebrew, and removing the Russian and Moldovan languages from the list (the latter in accordance with Moldova's 2023 decision to use the term "Romanian" in its legislation). These changes are not intended to deliberately diminish the status of the Russian language.
Legally, the ECRML allows each state to determine to which languages it applies, and removal from this list does not restrict the use of any language for personal or cultural purposes. Ukraine fully complies with Article 10 of its Constitution. This article guarantees the 'free development, use, and protection of the Russian language and other national minority languages.' The Russian language continues to be widely used in daily communication, mass media, publishing, and education. No Ukrainian law prohibits or restricts the use of the Russian language in private life.
As Ukraine’s Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, Olena Ivanovska explained, the phrase 'regional or minority languages' in the Charter was mistranslated into Ukrainian as 'regional languages or languages of national minorities.' This error, unique among all Council of Europe members, caused Russian, a dominant global language with over 250 million speakers and official status in a major power, to be incorrectly included among languages meant to protect endangered or vulnerable communities. The current proposal seeks to fix that inconsistency.
The Kremlin has for years weaponised the language issue to discredit Ukraine on the international stage, frequently promoting false claims such as 'linguistic genocide' or 'criminal liability for speaking Russian.' Such narratives have been systematically spread by Russian officials and state-controlled media since 2014.
See similar cases The conflict in Ukraine began in 2014 with a coup and a military crackdown on the Russian-speaking population and Ukraine's restrictions on language and religion are forcing Ukrainians to move to Russia.