Russia irked with Ukraine’s law to boost use of Ukrainian language

Tensions mounted between Moscow and Kiev after Ukraine’s parliament voted to boost the use of the Ukrainian language, a move testing already fraught relations between the two countries in the wake of Volodymyr Zelensky’s election to the Ukrainian presidency.

The FT reports that the lawmakers adopted the legislation on Thursday, before the end of outgoing Ukrainian president Petro Poroschenko’s term next month. It sets strict requirements for a broader use of Ukrainian in public life in education, business and the press, at the expense of Russian, a widely spoken language.

The move has triggered criticism from Moscow, which views it as a way to alienate Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population. .

Russia’s foreign ministry on Thursday said the law was a tool of “forced Ukrainization” of its southern neighbour’s large Russian-speaking population and a breach of the Minsk Agreements, the tentative ceasefire deal struck by the two countries in 2015 after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea the year before.

via FT