You're reading: Kyiv lacks Russian-language classes, says Education Minister

Ukrainian Education and Science, Youth and Sports Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk is complaining about a lack of Russian-language classes in Kyiv.

"For instance, parents in Kyiv are taking the ministry by storm, asking why they cannot send their children to Russian-language classes. Because the local authorities are afraid of getting to the fire of national patriots, who see sedition in everything and act under the principle "not let go," he said in an interview with the Newspaper 2000 weekly.

"And the problem is significant: more than 1,000 parents in Kyiv carry schoolchildren from the left bank to the right bank, because they cannot find any Russian school or high school on the left bank," he said.

According to him, about 16% of schools have ordered Russian Language and Russian Literature textbooks, which, according to Tabachnyk, is due to a great conservatism of teaching staff.

Meanwhile, he noted that there are Russian Literature textbooks for the tenth and eleventh grades for those schools, which teach this subject. These textbooks were published on the state order.