A law has come into force in Ukraine designed to protect the state language and push back on Russian as the nation consolidates.
National newspapers and magazines must now appear in Ukrainian.
Russian editions are not prohibited, but a parallel Ukrainian version must be printed in the same edition.
This is of course unprofitable for publishers.
The last nationwide Russian daily newspaper "Westi" was recently switched to Ukrainian, many papers are only published online.
Kerstin Holm
Editor in the Feuilleton.
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The law, which is directed against Russian, which is preferred by many Ukrainians in the east and south of the country, was passed shortly after President Petro Poroshenko was voted out of office in 2019.
But since then there has been a transitional period that expired at the weekend.
Significantly, the languages of “original minorities” in the country such as the Crimean Tatars, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, but also English and all official languages of the EU are exempt from the obligation to publish in Ukrainian.
There are also exceptions to the obligation for Ukrainian bookstores to offer at least fifty percent of their stocks in Ukrainian for the minority and EU languages mentioned.
From now on, all state employees, traffic police officers, bailiffs and clinic doctors are obliged to address citizens in Ukrainian unless they ask for another language. The same applies to service companies, i.e. employees of supermarkets, pharmacies, banks. Violations of the “right to be served in the national language” can be reported to the special representative for the protection of the state language and fines can be imposed if they are repeated.
The fact that foreign films now have to be dubbed in Ukrainian goes against the Russian media power, which accounts for two-thirds of television series. Also at lectures, shows, concert evenings, if the speaker speaks Russian, it is mandatory to be translated into Ukrainian. The victims are Russian-speaking Ukrainian writers and scientists, whose field of activity is severely restricted. But even traditionally Russian-speaking cities such as Kharkiv, Dnipro or Odessa, from which President Volodymyr Zelenskyj came, are being culturally assimilated by the western part of the country.
A key reason for the law was undoubtedly President Putin's claim to be the "patron" of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
But now Ukraine is the first country to actually ban press publications in a specific language, complains the Russian journalist Oleg Kashin, who lives in London.
Last but not least, the law is a blow to the Ukrainian media, which criticizes Putin and his Ukraine policy in Russian and actually deserves protection as a Russian counter-public.