The Ukrainian language will not be taught in schools in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the next academic year, the region’s acting head Denis Pushilin has said.
The language is not banned in the republic, but local students simply didn’t want to choose it as an additional course, Pushilin explained during a forum in Moscow on Thursday.
“There’s an opportunity in our schools to study not just Ukrainian, but any other language because we have many Greeks, many Bulgarians, many Armenians,” he told the audience.
If enough students express a desire to learn a certain language, a dedicated class is created for them, Pushilin continued.
“I’ll tell you, not a single class could’ve been put together” when it came to the Ukrainian language, he said.
In April, Russian Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said his ministry had been developing Ukrainian-language textbooks for the newly incorporated territories. The students in tenth and eleventh grades will be able to use them in September, while the manual for younger students is expected to be ready by the end of the year, according to Kravtsov.
Pushilin suggested that the DPR “will likely not be needing those books,” but things might be different in Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.
The Donetsk People’s Republic and the neighboring Lugansk People’s Republic have been in conflict with Ukraine since 2014, when they refused to recognize a violent coup in Kiev and declared independence.
The two territories officially became part of Russia last October, along with Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, following referendums in which the local populations voted overwhelmingly in favor of the move.