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Russia supports Venice Commission’s assessment of Ukraine’s education law

The experts stress that the law "provides no solution for languages which are not official languages of the EU, in particular, the Russian language"

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

© Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS

MOSCOW, December 13. /TASS/. Moscow supports the Venice Commission’s assessment of the Ukrainian education law, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

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Diplomat calls out Kiev’s new education law as taking aim at Russian language

According to her, the Commission’s experts stress that the law "provides no solution for languages which are not official languages of the EU, in particular the Russian language, as the most widely used language apart from the state language." Zakharova said the experts believed that "the less favorable treatment of these languages is difficult to justify and therefore raises issues of discrimination."

The Commission also concluded that "the appropriate solution would certainly be to amend Article 7 [of the law] and replace this provision with a more balanced and more clearly worded one," the Russian diplomat noted.

"We support the assessment offered by the Venice Commission. The implementation of the law would pave the way for an open discrimination against millions of Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine," Zakharova stressed.

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