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Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law to promote the Russian language and restrict the use of foreign words, the Russian news agency Tass reports. The law signed on Tuesday stipulates that “the norms of the contemporary Russian literary language must be observed” if Russian is used as the national language.

Among other things, a government commission must determine in what form and with what frequency dictionaries and the associated rules are to be published. These must then be approved by the cabinet. Exceptions should apply to foreign words for which there is no common Russian equivalent. The prohibited lists should also be printed in popular dictionaries and reference books.

Russian language very political problem

This law allows the Russian government to ban not only individual words, but entire books and other written works containing them. In Tass’s view, the introduction of such a law is appropriate because “it was also previously against the law to use words and expressions inconsistent with the norms of contemporary literary language, including profanity.”

In the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the Russian language has become a highly political issue. Large parts of Ukraine are traditionally Russian-speaking. These include cities such as Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odessa. Unlike minority languages, for example in the Soviet Union under Stalin, the Ukrainian government had not suppressed the Russian language in Ukraine for a long time.

Ukraine also has similar regulations

Against the backdrop of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine, Ukraine also passed a language law three years ago. It entered into force in January and is intended to protect the Ukrainian language as a state language and to push back Russian, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports. That is why, for example, national newspapers and magazines must be published in Ukrainian. State officials such as police officers, clinicians and bailiffs must also address citizens in Ukrainian unless they request another language. Violations are subject to fines. There are broad exceptions for minority languages ​​and all official languages ​​of the EU.

The regulation also applies to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His native language is Russian, but now he only speaks Ukrainian at public appearances. (t-online,csi)