Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has said he will propose envisaging in the Constitution of Ukraine the right of local councils to grant official status to Russian and other languages, leaving Ukrainian as a sole state language.
“We leave in force the language law of Kivalov-Kolesnichenko, which was adopted by Regions Party MPs and the Communists. In the regions where most people speak Russian it [the Russian language] has the legal status of a regional language. In fact, its rights and opportunities are actually the same as those of Ukrainian. As head of government, when considering amendments to the constitution, I will propose a provision according to which, while maintaining the status of Ukrainian as the sole state language, local councils will have the right to grant official status to Russian and other languages. The unity of the country cannot be achieved unless we learn to listen to each other and reach a compromise,” he said in a Victory Day address to the Ukrainian pe ople on May 8.
Yatsenyuk also recalled that the Ukrainian authorities, on their own initiative and in accordance with the Geneva accords, had launched a nationwide dialogue about the new Constitution of Ukraine. The main changes concern large-scale decentralization of power and the extension of powers of communities, districts, and the regions.
