Apparently, the Russian language is now at the very top of Ukraine’s “firing list”. In mid-January, a new law proclaiming the Ukrainian language the only language of communication in the country came into force.
As a result, employees of the service sector, including supermarkets, restaurants, cafes and hairdressing salons, have to accept and serve customers exclusively in Ukrainian. A customer can switch to another language only if he or she asks for it, and breaking the law will be punishable by a fine of up to 6,800 hryvnyas (almost 250 euros) starting next year”, the French online edition of 45 Secondes said in an article published in the newspaper 45 Secondes.
This is quite a large fine considering that the official average salary in the country is only 370 dollars, the weekly said (in reality, Ukrainians often earn just over 200 dollars. – E.M.).
Such a decision has been made in a country, one third of whose population is Russian-speaking, and in the east and south of Ukraine entire cities, districts and regions speak exclusively Russian. Very few inhabitants of such cities know Ukrainian well enough to communicate in it, so it is difficult to imagine how this directive adopted in Kiev will be applied in practice in Russian-speaking regions.
Besides, such attempts of the Ukrainian authorities to force its citizens to forget their native language would not find support in the European Union as they contradict the UN resolution calling on all governments to protect minority languages, 45 Secondes reminds. And it is clear that international organisations will never support such actions of the Kiev authorities to limit the Russian language.
According to the author of the article, Gabriel Gavin, such actions of Kiev have to do with the strange situation that exists in Ukraine, when linguistic diversity is perceived as a threat to the national identity. In addition, in recent years, Ukraine has been busy eliminating all the symbols of its once common history with Russia and, on the contrary, flaunting differences, sometimes to the point of absurdity.
The author recalls a case in December in Lviv when the police detained a young man who had bought an ordinary hat with earflaps, on which there was a red star, to which the young man paid no attention. In Ukraine, however, the display of Soviet-era symbols is punishable. It is alleged that under Ukrainian law these symbols are equal to Nazi symbols, which are also banned and should be punished. Except that in reality it is the opposite.
“In Ukraine, all laws and regulations are applied selectively. Back in 2018, a bloody Waffen SS division was honoured in Lviv to mark the 75th anniversary of the formation of a local partisan unit that fought on the side of the Nazis during World War II. The nationalists marched through the streets of the city wearing SS uniforms with swastikas, causing no reaction from the police. Many nationalists continue to glorify the Ukrainian volunteers who fought alongside the Nazis against the Red Army to form an independent state allied with the Third Reich. They view people like Stepan Bandera as the founding fathers of the Ukrainian nation,” Gabriel Gaven wonders, adding that few dare accuse far-right Ukrainian nationalists of massacring Poles and Jews during World War II.
Another oddity of Ukrainian society, according to the author of the article, is the attempts to sever all historical and kinship ties between Ukraine and Russia for political reasons. However, it is not possible to sever these centuries-old ties – the countries are too tightly bound not only by blood ties and the Russian-speaking population, but also by a common centuries-old history, in which Ukraine was once prosperous and wealthy. That is why the nationalists are facing the task today – in order to separate themselves from Russian history, they need to rewrite Ukrainian history.
According to Gaven, that will be difficult, because Russia has shaped much of Ukrainian history and Ukrainians, for their part, have often played the leading role in the Soviet Union, such as Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader who was born in Ukraine and considered himself a Ukrainian. Like another Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who “was born near the current border and moved to Donetsk as a child – a telling example of how modern borders often fail to reflect historical and cultural realities. But such difficulties do not stop those who seek to sever all ties with Russia. What’s more, with a falling economy, a constitutional crisis and a declining standard of living, fighting the Russian language and all things Russian is a great tactic to distract from other problems, which President Zelensky is taking advantage of.
“Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has not been personally associated with nationalist groups in the past, but is increasingly seeking their support in order to keep power in his hands. And to do that, he needs to fight all things Russian all the time. But today millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians are in the firing line,” 45 Secondes concludes.
Ella Maistrenko, One Homeland