Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich played for time on Thursday over signing a bill to make Russian the official language in parts of the former Soviet republic in the hope of avoiding further civil unrest after violent protests.
“Yanukovich has declared war not only on the opposition and certain democratic values but on independent Ukraine itself,” his main political foe, ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, said on Thursday from jail, where she is serving seven years on charges of abuse of office, in a statement issued by her party.
Parliament, dominated by Yanukovich’s majority Regions Party, rushed the bill through on Tuesday using a procedural trick that caught the opposition on the hop.
But the move, which the opposition says was a ploy to win back voters in Russian-speaking areas alienated by government economic policies which have hurt pensions and state handouts, backfired as hundreds of protesters poured on to the streets.
Yanukovich hosts Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 12 for talks on gas supplies, and analysts said signing the bill might help Ukraine win a lower price for Russian gas.
But with Yanukovich’s opponents galvanised by the bill and even some Russian-speakers saying it was a cynical move ahead of October elections, he appeared to want to avoid a quick decision that could reignite emotions and play into opposition hands.
“The President will make a decision … after he has given the law careful examination and (looked at) the responsible conclusions of experts,” Yanukovich’s representative in parliament, Yuri Miroshnichenko, said on Thursday.
While Ukrainian is the only state language, the bill would make Russian an official regional language in predominantly Russian-speaking areas in the industrialised east and southern regions such as Crimea where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based.
“This law is election bait for the Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine,” Russian-speaker Gennady Dubovoy said on the website of influential newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, referring to the October 28 parliamentary vote.
Moscow has pressed the Russian-speaking Ukrainian leader to make good on his 2009 election promise to upgrade the status of Russian in the country, divided between Ukrainian-speaking west and central areas and Russian speaking east and south.
For the opposition and millions who speak Ukrainian as their first language, its pre-eminence is a touchstone of sovereignty for a country divided for centuries between regional powers including Poland and the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires.
Small-scale protests continued in Kiev on Thursday, though there was no major intervention by riot police.
LIMBO
The bill is now in limbo – technically waiting a signature by the parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, who offered to resign. Parliament which goes into recess on Friday, could get a deputy speaker to sign but has yet to do so. The bill then requires Yanukovich’s signature to become law.
Yanukovich, who meets Putin in Yalta, is likely to press the Russian leader to slash the agreed price of $425 per thousand cubic metres it pays for its imports of Russian gas.
While the language question is not a factor in the gas issue, in which Russia has held out against Ukraine’s call to review a 2009 deal on pricing, analysts said it would contribute to the atmosphere at the talks.
“If Yanukovich were to bend (on the language law) under pressure from the opposition, he would appear weak at his meeting with Putin. In Russia there are pragmatic people and they want an agreement on gas pipelines not language. But language is an important background to the talks all the same,” said political analyst Mykhailo Pogrebinsky.
The opposition says the language bill will erode Ukrainian-speaking by future generations and strengthen Russia’s influence over the country of 46 million after 20 years of independence following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
The protests, in which police and demonstrators used tear gas and pepper spray against each other, were a blow to Yanukovich, who had successfully co-hosted a trouble-free European soccer championship and kept Tymoshenko’s case, which has been criticised by the European Union, out of the limelight.
But analysts said Yanukovich, who says he sees EU integration as a “strategic aim” but has his power base in the Russo-phone industrial region of Donetsk, would sign it in due course.
“The meeting with Putin will not allow Yanukovich to veto this law (on language) because it would be seen by Moscow as an unfriendly step,” said Volodymyr Fesenko of Penta analytical centre.
(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk; writing By Richard Balmforth; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
