“There is no ‘Russian language issue’ in Ukraine”

At a press conference in Ivano-Frankivsk, Victor Yushchenko claimed there was no ‘Russian language issue’ in Ukraine. He believes a recent decision of the Crimean parliament to conduct a referendum to recognize the Russian language as a second state tongue was passed “with an eye to upcoming elections” and “is totally political and speculative” and reminded those present that the Crimean Constitution allows local residents to use the Russian language, the President press office reported.

“I am convinced there is no Russian language problem in Ukraine,” Yushchenko said and added that there were problems with the Ukrainian language and some minority languages in Crimea.

He then remarked that the tendency to study the motherlanguage had been quite positive in the past year.