Ukrainian diplomats offer confederalisation plan, 50 languages of state to the Kremlin

01.04.201408:00

Instead of dictating its ultimatum-like terms to a sovereign and independent state, the Russian side should first pay attention to the catastrophic condition and complete lack of rights of its own national minorities, including Ukrainians, the Ukrainian FM’s statement says.

It is to be recalled that on Sunday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voiced the stance on the Ukrainian issue: ‘Frankly speaking, we don’t see any other way for the steady development of the Ukrainian state apart from as a federation’. In response, Yevgen Perebyynis, spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign ministry, noted that the Russian authorities should focus on their own problems.

‘Why doesn’t Russia implement federalism, which, by the way, is affixed in the official name of the state, with real and not just declarative substance?

Why aren’t the national subjects of the federation being given more authority, whose development today is stifled just as severely as during tsarist and Soviet times?

Why aren’t other languages, except Russian, being made languages of state, among them Ukrainian—the language of millions of Russian citizens?

Why not allow the holding of referendums on wider autonomy, and if necessary, on independence, in the national subjects of the federation?’ the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry wonders.

‘It’s not necessary to lecture others. It would be better for Russian leadership to start bringing law and order inside its own state,’ Ukrainian diplomats believe.