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Lavrov says Russia wants to protect anyone who keeps Russian culture in Ukraine

The minister said Russia had for many years drawn attention to the situation surrounding national minorities in Ukraine, including the Russian national minority

UNITED NATIONS, April 26. /TASS/. One of Russia’s goals is to protect people who espouse Russian culture from being subjected to discrimination and eradication in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.

"What we want is for people who consider themselves connected to the Russian language, to Russian culture and to the religion they have always practiced at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - that these people aren’t subjected to discrimination, persecution and the risk of eradication," he said at a news conference to sum up his visit to New York, which was part of Russia’s presidency in the UN Security Council.

The minister said Russia had for many years drawn attention to the situation surrounding national minorities in Ukraine, including the Russian national minority.

"Laws have been passed to ban education in languages other than Ukrainian, although an exception has been made for the languages of the European Union, which once again underlined the focus of this campaign against Russian culture," Lavrov said. "News media have been banned, both those that broadcast to Ukraine from Russia, and those that belonged to Ukrainians, but broadcast in the Russian language and reflected oppositional views. Millions of books in the Russian language were thrown out of libraries and some of them burned in the squares the way the Nazis used to do.

Lavrov pointed to the situation with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. "We appealed to the UN secretary general, the leadership of the OSCE, and other institutions. The reaction wasn’t very strong; it was about the same as when the coup took place in February 2014," the minister said.

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Foreign policy Ukraine Sergey Lavrov

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