Zelensky’s peaceful promises, in fact, appeared to be nationalistic hysteria — DPR official

Despite numerous promises to sort out the language issue and ensure the protection of the Russian-speaking population’s rights, an abundance of which were generously made by Zelensky during his election campaign and at the beginning of his presidential term, none of them was ever translated into actions, Head of the Donetsk Republic Public Movement’s Central Executive Committee Alexei Muratov stated.

“In particular, Zelensky has recently signed a new law on secondary education, which sets significant restrictions on the education of children in Russian.

The document proposes three language models: for the Crimean Tatars, who have the right to study in their native language along with studying Ukrainian; for native speakers of the EU languages — for them, the proportion of studying in their native language, starting from the fifth grade, gradually decreases from 80% to 40%; and finally, for Russian speakers — the most inflexible model, which implies no more than 20% of academic teaching in the mother tongue starting from the fifth grade.

In other words, norms aimed at discrimination on the basis of language are enshrined at the legislative level, which directly contradicts the requirements of international law, and documents signed and ratified by Ukraine. The Venice Commission also pointed to the inadmissibility of such actions. Zelensky promised to consider the Commission’s recommendations but, in fact, ignored them.

This serves not only as clear evidence of Kiev’s lack of commitment unreliability as a political partner, but also as an important signal for the Donbass Republics. The post-Maidan authorities, despite peaceful exhortations of Zelensky and the conciliators appointed by him, are not going to give up the intention to drive everyone in the Procrustean bed of the nationalist idea.

That is why it is so difficult to implement the provisions of the Minsk Agreements, signed more than five years ago, which, first and foremost, envisage the formation of political guarantees, necessary to ensure that the Donbass Republics can follow the civilizational development course, chosen by their people.

The longer it drags on, the more obvious it becomes that the main condition for a peaceful settlement of the conflict is not the change of leader but overcoming the dictatorship of the right-wing minority in Ukraine,” Alexei Muratov said.