40% of Ukrainians come out for granting the official status to the Russian language

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

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According to the poll conducted by the Democratic Initiatives forum and the Kiev international sociology institute from August 25 to September 3, about 40% of Ukrainians come out for granting the official status to the Russian language in the regions where most people want this. All in all, 1,980 people across Ukraine were polled. Meanwhile, 18% of the polled want to remove the Russian language from official communication all over Ukraine. At the same time 45% of the polled prefer the Russian language in their everyday life, 42% prefer Ukrainian and 13% can freely speak both languages. According to the Ukrainian legislation, the Russian language enjoys the status of the inter-ethnic communication language in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Constitution guarantees the free development, use and protection of Russian and other languages. According to the 2001 population census, 8.3 million Russians (17.3% of the population) live in Ukraine. 95.9% of them consider Russian their native language. All in all, over 29.6% of the Ukrainian population regard Russian as their native language. Having joined the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, Ukraine pledged itself to protect the Russian language as well as the Belarussian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, Greek, Jewish, Crimean-Tatar, Moldovan, German, Polish, Romanian, Slovak and Hungarian languages. In particular, a regional language can be used by the local self-government bodies. This issue is within the jurisdiction of the village, township and town councils.

Bookmark 40% of Ukrainians come out for granting the official status to the Russian language