MOSCOW, October 9. /TASS/. More and more residents of Ukraine are preferring to communicate in Russian, as they begin to understand how cruelly the West has treated them, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing.

"The commissioner for the protection of the state language of Ukraine, who proposed the initiative to destroy the Russian version of the keyboard on every computer in Ukraine, has displayed yet another idiocy. The Russian language is literally a pain in the neck for the Kiev junta," Zakharova said. "However, they are well paid for this in the West. The Kiev regime is doing everything it can, not only to eradicate the language but also to make people stop speaking it and thinking in it. After all, we are talking about millions of Ukrainians, but none of their efforts have succeeded," she added.

"Yes, we are fighting the Banderites. Our people are on the front lines, but we can also hear what is coming from the trenches on the other side — including Russian speech," the diplomat said. "Do you think all these laws will work when, at a critical moment, a junction of life and death, people continue to speak and think in Russian, even as they receive orders to kill Russians? What are these laws aimed at? They are aimed at further dividing people. It seems like all of this is oriented towards some distant future - to plant time mines," Zakharova added.

According to her, the situation is unfolding in the opposite direction. "More and more people in Ukraine are choosing to communicate in Russian because Russian cannot be forgotten. <...> Perhaps that is why, deep down, they are beginning to understand what those who so cruelly deceived them in the West have done," Zakharova pointed out. "These facts once again confirm the urgent tasks of the special military operation - to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine and eliminate the threats emanating from its territory. As the Russian leadership has stated, all of these goals will definitely be achieved," the spokeswoman concluded.