In its previous issue The Day wrote about Ukraine’s reaction to the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement about alleged breaches of the lingual rights of the Russian ethnic minority in Ukraine. Over the past weekend official Kyiv responded to Moscow’s accusation. The Foreign Ministry’s statement, in part, reads that they are totally ungrounded. Referring to the Constitution, Law on Ethnic Minorities in Ukraine, and Council of Europe’s framework convention, the statement explains the “tendentious accusations addressed to Ukraine” by the fact that Russia’s official agencies are being influenced by political forces obstructing the constructive development of Ukrainian-Russian relationships. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reminds us that “these forces recently attempted to prevent ratification of the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.” This document contains obligations with regard to “equal opportunities and conditions for studying Ukrainian in the Russian Federation and Russian in Ukraine.” The Ukrainian diplomats ask, in turn: What about Russia? The Foreign Ministry’s statement emphasizes that “the time has come to frankly and openly reply to the question about the language situation of the Ukrainian Diaspora in the Russian Federation. There is still not a single Ukrainian language newspaper, magazine, library or professional drama company to be found in the Russian Federation except several grade schools where Ukrainian is included in the curriculum.” Compare this to Ukraine with its 1,195 Russian language newspapers (49.7% of the total number of periodicals), 14 government-run Russian drama companies, and 2,399 schools with Russian as the language of instruction. The Foreign Ministry’s statement sums up the situation: “... ungrounded public accusations are not the best means of solving problems relating to the sensitive and vitally important sphere of supplying the cultural and language needs of the Ukrainian and Russian ethnic minorities in both countries.”
