OREANDA-NEWS. The former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko commented the proposal of the head of the president’s administration Andrey Bogdan to give Russian the status of a regional language in the Donbass.

“The creeping pro-Russian revenge is becoming more and more obvious,” the politician wrote on his Facebook page. According to Poroshenko, “the trade in language” will not bring Ukraine any benefits and “will not stop Russia”. He believes that Moscow “came neither for Lugansk, nor for Donetsk, and not even for the Crimea.” Ex-president considers that the main goals of the Kremlin are to stop Ukraine’s movement towards membership in the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization and to return Ukraine, “from the Donbass to Galicia,” to the sphere of Russian influence.

A day earlier, Bogdan in an interview suggested allowing the residents of Donetsk and Lugansk to use the Russian language as a regional language, if they return under the control of Kiev. At the same time, the politician declaimed against the introduction of Russian as the second state language in Ukraine.

In May 2019, Poroshenko, being a President, signed the law “On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as a state language”, which should partially come into force on July 16. The law prescribes to use only Ukrainian language by state authorities, educational institutions, hospitals, and service enterprises. Thus, the use of the Russian language is virtually excluded while a significant number of Ukrainians speaks it.