The Russian language has become one of the points for the destruction of Ukraine and an instrument of genocide of Ukrainians. Russia will continue using the mantra to protect Russian-speaking people in Ukraine for a long time, linguist and Director of the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Pavlo Hrytsenko believes. Russian narratives about inferior Ukrainian language seldom attract the Western commenters as a disinformation narrative it really is. They retransmit distorted information about the essence of the phenomenon of “Russian-speaking population.”
“Russia’s war against Ukraine is aimed at civilians, the destruction and destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, the cessation of exports. It is not about conquering territories, it is about destroying Ukraine as such. Therefore, I emphasize that it is a language of genocide. Russian propaganda on television is a classic language of genocide, which describes Ukraine as a country that is not real, which does not exist, that Ukrainians are not people, and therefore they can be killed. for food, for life, “said the famous historian Anne Applebom about the Russian war of aggression.
In the temporarily occupied territories, Russian criminals are deliberately pursuing a policy of linguicide – persecuting Ukrainians on the basis of language, trying to restore the educational process in schools under Russian education law, forcing the use of the occupiers’ language in public, and replacing Ukrainian names with Russian ones. This was stated by the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin. According to the Commissioner, discriminatory actions against the Ukrainian language are recorded in the spheres of education, culture, television and radio broadcasting, advertising and information for general acquaintance, book distribution, etc.
Russian occupation forces in the Kherson region plan to ban the circulation of documents in the Ukrainian language. Prior to that, they sought to make Russian the second state language, said the so-called “deputy head of the military-civil administration” of the Kherson region Kirill Stremousov, whom the Russian military appointed to “manage” the occupied region. The day before, he stated that in the Kherson region, Russian will become the state language along with Ukrainian. According to Stremousov, education in schools and institutions of higher education will be conducted in Russian, but allegedly “Ukrainian classes can be formed at the request of parents.”
The friends of Ukraine and supporters of human rights and freedoms should be aware about linguistic violence of the Russian elites against Ukrainians. Ukraine must defend itself to stop this cultural aggression.
Speakers:
- Taras Kremin, Language Protection Commissioner of Ukraine;
- Olha Kyryliuk, phD in philology, Volodymyr Vynnychenko Central Ukrainian State Pedagogical University
- Larysa Masenko, social linguist, professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
UKRAINE IN FLAMES project is created by Ukraine Crisis Media Center, Ukrainian Catholic University’s analitical center and NGO “Euroatlantic Course”. We are aiming at searching a loud support for Ukraine in the war started by Russia on the 24th of February 2022.
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