Ukraine is facing a problem with the Ukrainian language, rather than Russian, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko has said.
He said this at a joint press conference with President of the Belgian Senate Armand De Decker in Brussels on Thursday.
“There’s no problem with Russian in Ukraine. Ukraine has a problem
with Ukrainian. And it’s not just a problem with communication, it’s a
problem with identity,” he told Interfax-Ukraine, while commenting on
what Ukraine can learn from Belgium, which has three official languages.
Yuschenko said that each nation resolves this problem taking into account its peculiarities.
He said that Ukraine is implementing a European language policy that
foresees that each national minority has the right to develop its
language.
De Decker, in turn, said that the “situation in one country has never matched the situation in another.”
He said that there are three official languages in Belgium, but “in fact there are two.”
He said that the existence of several official languages in Belgium
is a “factor of collective enrichment.” He also said that this factor
complicated political life, but helped at an everyday level.
