Language is our state border – MP Kniazhytskyi on Ukrainian language role

He shared his opinion on the Espreso TV channel.

"Of course, the colonization was about killing our traditions, killing our language and everything that distinguishes us from Russians. Language is the main marker that distinguishes us from everyone, and from Russians in the first place, because we were a Russian colony," he said.

Kniazhytskyi noted that the Constitutional Court ruled that there is no such thing as a "Russian-speaking population", there are Russians as a national minority, as well as other national minorities living in Ukraine, and there are Ukrainians and representatives of other nations.

"The minority language has certain protection, as stated in our Law on National Minorities, which was recently adopted by the Verkhovna Rada. But the Ukrainian language as the state language, which is an attribute of our state, just like the flag and anthem, is where we differ from the Russians," the MP added.

In addition, he noted that when Israel was rebuilding its independence, they restored a dead language that identified them. They did not have a language police, but there were public organizations authorized by the state, and people walked the streets of Tel Aviv and approached people who spoke other languages and told them to speak Hebrew.

"Therefore, when we have Ukrainians, it is obvious that they should have fully protected rights, but our goal was that if you go to a store in any locality in Ukraine and ask for help in Ukrainian, the seller is obliged to answer you in Ukrainian. It is not forbidden to answer when he is addressed in another language and he suddenly knows it, but he has no right not to answer in Ukrainian when he is addressed in Ukrainian. But this is an attribute of the state," he stressed.

In particular, Kniazhytskyi recalled a recent interview with former German Social Democratic Chancellor Schroeder, in which he noted that one of Putin's conditions for stopping, so to speak, a full-scale invasion was the introduction of bilingualism.

"Because language is the border of our state, it is the wall we wanted to build on the border," he said.