UKRAINE

Ukraine responds to Russia’s threats of “secession of a number of regions from Ukraine”

Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Dmytro Kuleba and Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vasyl Bodnar responded to a statement by Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin on the “possible secession of a number of regions from Ukraine.”

Kuleba’s quoted speech: “Volodin threatens with the secession of regions from Ukraine. I have to upset him: there will not be any secession. Instead, we are ready to accept a couple of regions of the Russian Federation. To restore historical justice, democratic governance, and to introduce European living standards.”

In his turn, Bodnar said that Russia “is once again trying to play the ‘national card’ in Ukraine.” “The statement is a classic set of cliches, prejudices and manipulations extensively used by the Kremlin on ethno-national issues in Ukraine. … The provocative formulations and the tone of the statement are directed against the territorial integrity of Ukraine and are embedded in the logic of Russia’s ongoing hybrid aggression against our state.”

“There is an obvious attempt to stir up ethnic hatred in Ukraine again, although the rights of national minorities are fully secured by the Ukrainian state. … The logical question is how the rights of Ukrainians in the Russian Federation are secured, how many schools have a multimillion Ukrainian community in the Russian Federation? The answer is: None!”

The Deputy Foreign Minister reminded that the Russian invaders “are systematically destroying Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar education in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, in particular in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

“Over the nearly six years of occupation, the number of school students in Crimea who studied in Ukrainian has decreased by 76 (!) times; there remained only 172 students out of 13,000.Together with the termination of the system of cultural institutions … the policy of Russia in Crimea and the temporarily occupied the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions is a direct discrimination against the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar communities in these territories. The real purpose of Volodin’s statement is to shift international attention away from the Kremlin’s oppression and intimidation policy in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia,” Bodnar said.

EMPR

Source: ukrpravda