The speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Ruslan Stefanchuk, has said that there “are not and cannot be” any Russian national minorities in the country and that the rights of Russian-speaking residents “should be infringed”, the Ukrainian mass media have reported.
Stefanchuk emphasised that the law on national minorities adopted in Ukraine in December 2022 does not apply to Russians. He also accused Russians living in the country of “not showing respect”. The MP stated:
“Their rights should be infringed in this part.”
Earlier, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration Olga Stefanyshina made a similar statement. Her words were a comment on reports that the European Commission would not assess the situation with the Russian language in the country when discussing Ukraine’s accession to the EU.
Russians are the second largest ethnic group in Ukraine after Ukrainians. In 2001, according to the census data, Russians accounted for 17.3 per cent of the country’s population.
