The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine called the Czech ambassador to the country, Radek Matulu, for clarification on the meeting of the Czech President Milos Zeman with a delegation of ethnic Rusyns at the beginning of the month.

The Czech diplomat rejected the possibility of any calls from Prague for the establishment of Ruthenian autonomy in Transcarpathia, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. According to the ministry, the Czech ambassador confirmed the support of the territorial integrity of Ukraine from the Czech Republic. The Czech side is preparing to provide official materials on this issue.

“The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine will continue to react decisively to any attempts to cast doubt on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

As Ukrainian Ambassador to the Czech Republic Yevgeny Perebynis reported on the eve, Ruthenian activists are busy not only with issues of language and culture, but also with the destabilization of Ukraine, which in the east "is already struggling with pro-Russian separatists."

“The Ruthenian question is not a question of nationality, but a political project that largely supports, promotes and finances the Kremlin with the aim of destabilizing the situation in Ukraine, especially in Transcarpathia,” the diplomat said.

Total Ukrainization

The meeting of Milos Zeman with representatives of the Carpathian Rusyns took place on September 3 and was timed to coincide with the centennial of the signing of the Saint Germain Treaty and the inclusion of Subcarpathian Rus in Czechoslovakia.

The delegation included seven people: the head of the Association of Rusyns of Russia Andrei Fatula, the priest Fr. Dimitri Sidor, President of the World Council of Subcarpathian Rusyns, Vasily Dzhugan and his deputy Mikhail Tyasko, activist Ivan Danatsko, young nineteen-year-old Russian poet Mikhail Chikivdya, as well as Tatyana Pop, head of the Austrian coordination center for Russian organizations.

  • Signing the Saint-Germain Treaty
  • Gettyimages.ru
  • © PA Images

Note that Dimitri Sidor has long been known as one of the most active fighters for the preservation of the language and culture of the Carpathian Ruthenians. He was one of the initiators of the creation of the representative body of the Rusyns - the Soym of the Subcarpathian Rusyns. In 2008, the Ukrainian authorities opened a criminal case against him against the territorial integrity of the country, he was sentenced to a suspended sentence.

Recall that the Saint-Germain Treaty was signed on September 10, 1919, following the First World War between the countries of the Entente and Austria, which became the successor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Under the terms of the agreement, which was part of Austria-Hungary, Subcarpathian Rus became part of the Czechoslovak Republic. In the period between the First and Second World Wars, the region had autonomy rights and self-government.

Subsequently, the region inhabited by Rusyns was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR, becoming one of the Ukrainian regions, although local residents asked Moscow to accept the region into the Soviet Union as a separate republic.

According to experts, the new authorities began to conduct a total Ukrainianization of the region, trying to gradually get rid of the national culture and ethnic identity of the Rusyns. However, it was not possible to turn the Rusyns into Ukrainians - the small Slavic people were able to maintain their traditions and language.

According to censuses conducted over the past ten years in the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, today about 55 thousand people are among the Rusyns. However, some activists of Ruthenian public organizations claim that the real number of the ethnic group is from one and a half to five million people. The existence of Ruthenians as a national minority is recognized by a number of European countries, as well as by the UN, but the Ukrainian authorities consider Ruthenians only as an ethnographic group of the Ukrainian ethnos. The Rusyns did not bring great freedom and the collapse of the USSR. According to experts, the attitude towards them from Kiev has not changed.

Speech Monopoly

As a member of the delegation, received by Milos Zeman, told reporters, during the talks, the Ruthenians asked the Czech president to talk about with their Ukrainian counterpart about the problems of the Ruthenian community.

In addition, the negotiators raised the issue of granting Czech citizenship to the Rusyns of Ukraine. Zeman was reminded that Ruthenians and Czechs were once citizens of one state, drawing an analogy with Hungary, which grants its citizenship to ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine. The Czech leader answered this request evasively, saying that now it is impossible, but not excluding a return to this topic in the future.

  • Czech President Milos Zeman
  • Reuters
  • © Leonhard Foeger

As Tatyana Pop admitted in an interview with Ukraina.ru, Ukrainian Rusyns do not need autonomy, since they do not have sufficient strength and capabilities to do this. According to her, the Ruthenians want to get Kiev to "end the Ruthenian ethnocide and recognize them as a national minority in Ukraine", as well as provide an opportunity to study the Ruthenian language and culture in schools.

According to media reports, Milos Zeman agreed to talk with Vladimir Zelensky about the fate of the Ruthenians, but stressed that decentralization issues are exclusively an internal affair of Ukraine. According to the Czech publication DenikN, Zeman noted that the Minsk Agreements could play a role for the Rusyns, according to which Kiev committed to decentralization, which would give the Ruthenian language the regional status while maintaining the state language as the Ukrainian language.

Recall that the struggle of politicians who came to power in Ukraine in 2014 with the Russian language also affected the languages ​​of other national minorities. One of the first decisions of the new Rada abolished the law on the foundations of state language policy, which was in force before the “Euromaidan”. The document made it possible to give regional status the languages ​​of national minorities while maintaining the status of the state language of Ukrainian.

In 2017, the Law on Education entered into force in Ukraine, which abolished the right of national minorities to receive education in their native language. From this point on, teaching can be conducted, with few exceptions, only in Ukrainian. Tight language restrictions were also introduced for central television channels, which should have at least 75% broadcast in Ukrainian.

Former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko even used the topic of the primacy of the Ukrainian language as one of the key lines of his election program. Before the end of the presidential term, the politician signed the law “On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language”, according to which the use of any languages ​​other than Ukrainian in public areas is prohibited.

Hostages of fear

The language policy of Kiev outraged not only the residents of the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, but also the ethnic Hungarians and Ruthenians living in Transcarpathia. In the light of these changes, official Budapest even began to vest Transcarpathian Hungarians with Hungarian citizenship. This caused great indignation in Kiev - according to Ukrainian law, dual citizenship is prohibited.

For its part, the Hungarian authorities accuse the Ukrainian leadership of violating the rights of national minorities. Some tensions in relations between countries remain today. So, on September 3, Chargé d'Affaires of Hungary in Ukraine Kristin Marfe was called to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry because of the words of the representative of the Hungarian government Tristan Azbey. The Hungarian official said earlier about the crisis of the civil war in Ukraine - these words in Kiev called "unacceptable rhetoric."

According to experts, today the national minorities living in Ukraine seek to enlist the support of some external force, and the Ruthenians chose the Czech Republic as such. As political analyst Boris Mezhuyev explained in an RT commentary, this way minorities expect to strengthen their own weight in Ukraine.

  • RIA News
  • © Vladimir Akimov

“The meeting of the Czech President with the organization of Rusyns can be regarded as a sign of Prague’s readiness to exert some cultural and political influence on the Ukrainian national minorities. For its part, the Ukrainian authorities are afraid of the emergence on its territory of centers of influence of neighboring countries - Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, whose territories were once included in Soviet Ukraine, ”the expert explained.

At the same time, the Ukrainian ruling elite itself provokes and incites such moods and trends, the expert emphasizes.

As Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Institute of the CIS countries, explained in an RT commentary, the artificial creation of a single Ukrainian nation from those who live in the territory of modern Ukraine has become the main state line of Kiev.

“A mono-ethnic Ukrainian state is being built by force, the authorities do not want to admit that Ukraine is a multinational country. Abstract Ukrainian state does not recognize the right to the existence of national minorities. They believe that these are the same Ukrainians who, due to a strange misunderstanding, did not learn the Ukrainian language, ”the expert emphasized.

Kiev is afraid of external interference, a possible assassination attempt on Ukrainian territories by neighboring countries, even members of the European Union, but these moods are groundless, said Boris Mezhuev.

“The politics and reactions of Kiev clearly show paranoia, which arose as a result of the weakness of the Ukrainian state. But these fears are in vain, European countries will not review the Ukrainian borders, ”said the expert.

According to Vladimir Zharikhin, the correction of the linguistic and national policies of Ukraine is possible, but in the distant future.

“So far, perhaps some modification of linguistic norms can be expected, but nothing more. Yes, it is possible that in the future Kiev will be forced to admit that Ukraine is a multinational state and the rights of national minorities should be protected, but this should not be expected in the near future, ”the expert summed up.