Russia Asked OSCE, CoE To Assess Ukrainian Bill On Official Language - Lavrov

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th October, 2018) Russia has submitted a request to OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir and structures of the Council of Europe to assess the Ukrainian bill on the functioning of Ukrainian as the country's official language, which restricts the use of the Russian language by Ukrainians, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

The bill stipulates that only Ukrainian be used by government and municipal organizations, educational institutions and in the social sphere.

"We have already asked OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir, the structure of the Council of Europe how they view this and if they want to prevent the bill from going past the first reading.

We will see what the answer will be like," Lavrov said in an interview with RT France, Paris Match and Le Figaro.

The Ukrainian law included exceptions for English and other EU languages, the diplomat noted.

"This means that the only object of this attack is Russian which is spoken by the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian citizens, many of whom are native speakers [of Russian]," the minister noted.