MOSCOW, July 23. /TASS/. Representative of Western countries ‘go into their shells’ when presented with the statements, made by Ukrainian authorities regarding the rights of Russian-speaking citizens, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during the meeting with heads of Russian nonprofits.

The minister quoted Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister on European and Euro-Atlantic integration Olga Stefanishina, who said that the Ukrainian authorities do not consider it necessary to protect the language rights of Russian-speakers.

"There were a lot of similar remarks. When you show them to our Western interlocutors, on those rare occasions when we meet each other in the UN, they simply retreat, go into their shell, as the saying goes," the foreign minister pointed out.

Speaking at the UN on July 16, Lavrov stated that the "masters of the Ukrainian regime" must force Kiev to comply with the UN Charter article that guarantees basic rights and freedoms of all people, regardless of their race, gender, language or religion. Meanwhile, the foreign minister called on everyone, who is genuinely interested in overcoming the Ukrainian crisis, to include the key issue of the rights of all national minorities "without exceptions" in their proposals. He noted that "the corresponding requirement has only recently been formulated in EU documents on Ukraine’s accession, mainly thanks to the principle and insistent position of Hungary."

Ukraine embarked on the policy on eradication of the Russian language immediately after the 2014 coup d’etat. In May, 2019, President Pyotr Poroshenko signed the law "On ensuring of the use of the Ukrainian language as the state language," which cemented this policy at the state level. After the legislation, which violates the minorities’ right for their native language, was criticized by the Venice Commission and the European Council, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled in 2021 that "the Russians do not exist as a separate national group within the country," that "they are a political construct," and have no right "for legal protection as either ethnic or language entity." Since 2022, the Ukrainian authorities have embarked on the policy of total de-Russification.