Stanislav Fedorchuk, political scientist and internally displaced person from Donetsk, believes that the war in Ukraine is a direct consequence of Ukraine’s weak language policy in Crimea and the Donbas where whole generations have been raised with no proper national consciousness or formal education, with limited access to Ukrainian media and little protection of Ukrainian language rights.
Mr. Fedorchuk states that it is shameful and inadmissible that the positions for heads of the departments of culture and education in the Donetsk Regional Administration have been vacant for almost a year. After all, these spheres are currently just as strategic as military affairs.
He notes that the absence of Ukrainian broadcasting and the presence of powerful Russian media are a matter of political will, and not technical resources.
“However, such initiatives are impossible without a State Language Inspectorate. We should eliminate the useless Fire Inspectorate and hundreds of other needless corrupt institutions in Ukraine and I’m sure we’ll find enough money for a lot of useful things.”
Related:
- Ukrainian becoming de facto the language of Ukraine, Viatrovych says
- Kremlin’s double standards on language issues in post-Soviet space continued
- Moscow’s invasion hasn’t affected Russian language rights in Ukraine, experts say
- Russia ‘for first time in its history’ has lost its monopoly on the Russian language, Zhadan says
- Education Minister Serhiy Kvit: “There can be no Ukraine without the Ukrainian language”
- Soldiers of Dnipro-1 Battalion go back to school to improve their Ukrainian language
