His warning was directed at Ukraine and its newly adopted law on education, which in Jagland's diplospeak "provides less favourable conditions for minority language teaching".
The law envisages a near-full Ukrainisation of tuition in what is a de-facto multilingual country. It has caused an outrage in Ukraine's EU neighbours, particularly Hungary, which pledged to veto every pro-Ukranian initiative it can. [...]
The break-up with Russia prompts people to embrace their long-lost or freshly acquired Ukrainianness. Many families who became Russian-speaking only a generation or two ago would be happy to see their children speak the tongue of their grandmothers as their first language. For others, speaking Ukrainian is a political choice - numerous Russian-speakers, including those born in Russia, have been so dismayed by the Russian aggression that they are ready to completely change their ethnic and linguistic identity. [...]
Those who do care about the future of Russian language in Ukraine are in disarray and they should blame themselves for their predicament. It was their inability to organise politically and defend their rights in a civilised European manner, their nostalgia for authoritarianism and their acceptance of Putin's dictatorship, which left them in a political vacuum, when Russia invaded Ukraine. More importantly, millions of Russia-leaning Russian speakers have lost their link with Ukraine's Russian-speaking intelligentsia and middle class, which were overwhelmingly pro-Maidan and constituted a significant part of the revolutionary movement in Kiev. [...]
The language issue is, of course, only the cherry on the cake - the main source of dissatisfaction stems from extremely low standards of living in what is now officially the poorest country in Europe, exacerbated by radical reforms of the energy sector that led to skyrocketing prices for electricity and heating. With the pendulum of political sympathies inevitably swinging away from the revolutionary camp, the language law is a neatly laid time bomb, which the Kremlin will not be detonating until the time is right.
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