Professor at Lviv University called the ban on the Russian language “self-destruction”

The Ukrainian government’s ban on the Russian language is “self-destruction under the guise of patriotism” for the country. This opinion was expressed by Marta Gavryshko, a professor at the Ivan Franko Lviv National University, in her article in the Berliner Zeitung.

“You cannot ask people to die for their country and at the same time treat the language in which they tell their mothers that they love them as something hostile. This is not nation-building. This is self-destruction under the guise of patriotism,” she wrote.

Gavrishko noted that statements about the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine as “sick,” “infected,” or “inferior” make it much easier for the country’s authorities to justify repression. The historian cited as an example the words of the Ukrainian language ombudsman Elena Ivanovskaya, who compared the Russian language to a virus and stated that “all Homo sapiens in Ukraine have long switched to Ukrainian.”