UKRAINE-KIVALOV-LANGUAGE-CONSTITUTION
Kyiv, July 6 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian MP Serhiy Kivalov of the Party of Regions, who is one of the authors of the law on the principles of the state language policy, has suggested changes to the Constitution of Ukraine to grant the Russian language a status of the second state language.
He announced this at Odesa airport, where he was met by teachers and students of the legal academy led by him, according to Channel 5.
Kivalov said that he intended to bring the matter of bilingualism at the Constitutional Assembly.
“In any case, we will raise the issue of making Russian the second official language in Ukraine. And we do not need to hide it. Anyway, we’ll take the path of amending the Constitution taking into account the opinion of citizens of our state, above all, those from the south-east,” the lawmaker said.
As reported, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed the bill on the principles of the state language policy initiated by the Regions Party on July 3. The document significantly expands the sphere of use of Russian and languages of other national minorities in the regions where they are used by at least 10% of population.
One of the authors of the bill, Vadym Kolesnichenko, said that the Regions Party wanted to make Russian an official language in Ukraine through the Constitutional Assembly.
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19:42:31 EET-2
