Tymoshenko opposes government officials speaking Russian

if officials want to be Ukrainian officials, they should speak only in the Ukrainian language,” Tymoshenko said.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc voted with the Party of the Regions and the Communist Party on September 19 to approve the law on the civil service that allows government officials to speak Russian.

What is the position of PM finally? Or it is just a trade wit Party of Regions

I can\'t tell you what her final position is. But I\'m hoping that this latest statement reflects her real sentiments.

\"The only \\\"separatism\\\" I read about is in the Russian press and comments by those who have very few intelligent arguments to offer.\".......... of course, it not on the political agenda.

Acts of separation happen in a precipitous rythm when the conditions are there.

Let\'s meet on this website (or equivalent) in 10 years for a chat on events.

Keep dreaming, friend.

I\'ve been visiting Ukraine annually for the last 15 years, and the trend towards national consolidation and self-identification (as Ukrainians) has been growing steadily. There are a few Russian-supported extremists (of somewhat advanced age and with great big beards) who still pop up every now and then in Crimea or Luhansk or even Odessa, but they are simply swimming against the tide.

Maybe maybe, we are discussing unmeasurable elements here.

The world is full of people with conviction about how the future looks like. Then come historical surprizes. People are then surpized. One hears then: \"Oh, we didn\'t expect this to happen\"

One example? the financila crisis in the US. Two weeks ago, all fine and happy. Now the US is on the brink of seizure. So never say never. Now back to Ukraine: The country has other issues to deal with now than Language. The Language issue is used to blind the population.

Just make it illegal for Yushchenko or anyone in the diplomatic corps to speak English when meeting with western diplomats. Require western diplomats to either speak Ukrainian or bring their own translators.

You don\'t need to \"require\" Western diplomats to speak Ukrainian. A great many of them have the courtesy of learning and speaking Ukrainian. The same can\'t be said for most Russian \"diplomats\" who insist on Ukrainians speaking to them in Russian.

To see just how stupid this policy is, just substitute English for Russian. Try making it illegal for Ukrainian government officials to speak English and see what the response is. Pol Pot made it illegal (punishable by death) to speak any foreign language in Cambodia. Look at the results.

You simply don\'t get it. Timoshenko wants to enforce the use of Ukrainian language by officials conducting official government business.

You\'re damned right that the use of English by Ukrainian civil servants (other than in contact with English-speaking foreigners) in the conduct of official government business should also be proscribed.

The same can be said for French, Spanish, Urdu, Xhosa, Yucatec Maya........

The only \"separatism\" I read about is in the Russian press and comments by those who have very few intelligent arguments to offer.

The \"warning\" is always trotted out when one or another politician or \"activist\" can\'t get his way. Instead of recognizing that Ukraine, like any other large country, has a diverse population with a variety of opinions; and that the government may often take positions that are supported by one group but not by another, these Russophilic Cassandras are always ready to trot out their \"separatist\" predictions.

Get over it, fellows. You\'ve shouted \"fire\" in the theater once too often to be believable. Numerous surveys show very little public interest in \"separatism\" - not even in Crimea.

Blind politicians... every time they pull off a trick like this, they add weight to the already tight rope of separatism.

On the one hand they please the revenge minded west of the country (direct result in the polls), on the other hand they dig themselves a historical problem (separation, but this will happen only in 10 years, when their political careers will be over).

This radical attitude is fueled by the US Ukrainian community, bolstered by years of US anti-communism, transformed in anti-russian. This serves the US interests well. Keep in mind that the wife of the president is ex-state department and ex-CIA. Who doubts she is playing the messenger with the US?

The office of Cheney and Halliburton were present at the US biz meeting with Yushenko. This smells like juicy contracts... By the way i\'d like to get rich aswell: I\'ll set-up a radical anti-russian committee in Ukraine, fund some republican emigre stuff, and then get a piece of the Halliburton contracts.

Russian is a convoluted mix of Ukrainian and Asian dialects. It should be eliminated as it is a bastard language. The pnly places Russian is of any value is when your work entails maid, laundry or janitorial services. The language of the future is English, Mandarin and Ukrainian.

People should be free to speak whatever language allows them most clearly to communicate. Laws restricting the language in which people can speak are a violation of fundamental human rights.

No one is restricting the \"language in which people can speak\". All that Timoshenko is saying is that - if you want employment with the Ukrainian government - you must speak in the official language of that country while conducting official business. I think you are defining \"human rights\" as being whatever you want it to be. Next time I\'m in Kyiv I\'ll park myself in your apartment as an expression of my \"fundamental human right\" for shelter. I think my definition may prove even more compelling than yours.

Requiring the 60% of Ukrainians who speak Russian as their native language to learn Ukrainian, a bastard mix of Russian and Polish, is unproductive, unfair, and unwise. Ukraine should adopt both English and Russian as official state languages with equal status to Ukrainian, so that Ukraine can end its isolation take its rightful place in the international community as a neutral country, not subjugated by either east or west.

Ukrainian is the language of Ukraine just as French is the language of France. Ukrainians should eliminate the \"Russian\" colonist imperalist stranglehold from their territory. Russian is not even a language. It is a bastardized version of Ukrainian and Mongol languages. Those Rassians not happy with learning Ukrainian should go back to where they came from. They should be stripped of citizenship and be carted off to their mother land. We don\'t need illegal immigrants from Russia spreading dirty filthy corruption and anti-democratic values.

Russia should declare Ukrainian (the pure language) the official language of Russia and start a purification program to remove their bastardized mongol language from this planet.

pal....you are full of shit....you and and your fucked up country are nothing but trash....you wouldnt even be a country right now if the Russians didnt want you to be....vot yedi nahuy suka....yedi nahuy...

Correction - RUSSIAN IS A BASTARDIZED VERSION OF UKRAINIAN AND ASIATIC LANGUAGES. Russian is closer to Chinese than any European languages. One day, China will force Russia to switch from Cyrillic to Chinese characters.

Someone is losing his nerves and showing his real face here... In the west we call comments like this Racism, they are punishable by law and have no place in a country that has European ambitions.

Right now Europeans keep quiet about this discrimination because it is in their interest. But they watch it carefully.

The Russians, as far as they might still have an interest except have the Ukrainians pay for their gas bills, just need to watch the Ukrainian nationdestroy itself by its own stupidity.

Russian is a filthy dirty Asian bastardized patois used for cleaning toilets. No use anywhere in this world. The vermin who speak this unclean patois should go back to Asia or Siberia or whereever the hell they came from. Russian illegal immigrants, go back home.

Kudos to Timoshenko. Requiring Ukrainian civil servants whose salaries are paid by Ukrainian citizens to speak in the official language of the state that employs them is a small but necessary step to counteract centuries of discrimination against the Ukrainian language. The sooner Ukrainians begin to communicate in a common language other than Russian, the sooner they will free themselves of the \"close ties\" that weighs like a heavy wet blanket on the nation\'s independent development.

I too agree that Ukrianian should be used by employees of the government. Would Russia allow Ukrainian to be spoken by government employees in Russia? I doubt It.

Russian is everywhere in Ukriane already, even on this websight. There should a line drawn with government officials.

The UKRAINIAN Goverment OFFICIALS WHO GO TO MOSCOW ON OFFICIAL VISITS

SHOULD ALSO SPEAK UKRAINIAN AND NOT RUSSIAN . THIS INCLUDES TIMOSHENKO

AND YUSCHENKO .

THE ABOVE WAS MY POST