Court upholds Russian as regional language in east Ukraine

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Court upholds Russian as regional language in east Ukraine

 14:35 | 20/ 02/ 2007

KIEV, February 20 (RIA Novosti) - An appeals court has upheld the status
of Russian as a regional language in eastern Ukraine, a regional authority
said Tuesday. The appeals court overturned the decision of a district
court in the city of Donetsk revoking the language's regional status,
thereby upholding a May 2006 ruling by the Donetsk regional court granting
Russian the status of a regional language. The status of the Russian
language in the former Soviet country was one of the hotly debated issues
that delayed the signing of a national unity agreement on key policies by
President Viktor Yushchenko and parliamentary leaders before Viktor
Yanukovych's appointment as prime minister last year.

The sides eventually agreed to keep Ukrainian as the main state language,
without enshrining it as the only official language. Yanukovych said
previously that granting Russian the status of an official language in the
country was impossible under current conditions, but that Ukraine needed a
law to regulate the use of the Russian language, in line with the European
Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Ukraine's Communist leader,
Petro Symonenko, earlier said his party will push the government for a
referendum on granting Russian the status of an official language, and
that the party will advocate budget spending in full on programs to enable
the Charter to be applied in Ukraine.

He said the current language policy being pursued by the authorities has
antagonized certain forces in Russia, who took advantage of the situation
to create an unfavorable political climate and impede the normalization of
Ukrainian-Russian relations.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070220/61006252.html

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