Donetsk – Sputnik. Chernyavskiy stated to Sputnik: “If there was a possibility, if I could go to my mother in Moscow and seek asylum in Russia, I would do it.” He added: “So far, Bandera Street has not yet appeared, and I hope it never appears in Kharkov, because Bandera is not a hero to me. If he is a hero to someone in Lviv, let them name streets after him there.”
Earlier, a resident of Odessa compared the situation in all aspects of life by extremist activists and the Ukrainian authorities to genocide. She told Sputnik: “Ninety percent of Odessa residents speak Russian, and this has always been the case. Even among my acquaintances with nationalist tendencies, they still speak Russian in their daily lives. The language our parents raised us with cannot be destroyed. Our language will remain, and we think in it. Everything they try to do is in vain. They do this to humiliate us. It is simply genocide, and we understand that,” noting at the same time that “young people are more susceptible to forced Ukrainian language propaganda.”
She added: “They have now adopted a very cunning approach in this matter, presenting the Ukrainian language as a trend to speak. Children are raw material that can be influenced without coercion. Presenting it as a trend can be effective. Currently, speaking Ukrainian is fashionable, I can say that with certainty.”
It is noted that following the 2014 coup in Ukraine, the authorities launched a campaign against Soviet history and everything associated with Russia, including the Russian language. In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law “ensuring the use of the Ukrainian language as the official language.” This law obliges citizens to use Ukrainian in all aspects of life.
In this regard, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated earlier, “For many years, Ukrainian authorities have pursued an aggressive policy aimed at derussification and forced assimilation, while international organizations ignore discrimination against national minorities, especially against the Russian people.”
