On February 28, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court ruled the bill “On the principles of the state language policy” unconstitutional and rendered it invalid. The law in question adopted back in 2012 and known as the “Kivalov-Kolesnichenko language law,” granted Russian the status of a “regional language.” It was precisely the abolition of this law by the Verkhovna Rada on February 23, 2014, right after then-President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country, that Russia saw as an aggressive gesture against the “Russian-speaking population” of Ukraine and later used as a pretext to justify the annexation of Crimea and military aggression in the Donbas.
OP-ED
Tetyana Ogarkova: The truth behind Ukraine’s language policy
(Archive photo) Students at a Ukrainian language school in the Crimean capital of Simferopol, Crimea, during a lesson.
