POLITICAL MOBILIZATION OF RUSSIAN SPEAKERS AS A CHALLENGE FOR UKRAINE’S ETHNIC POLICY?

Ukraine has been an independent state for 25 years. During the years of independence the democratic world blamed Ukraine's political elite for the reluctance to carry out political, economic and social reforms in the country as well as for the lack of sustainable development, corruption in the state apparatus, unfair elections and administrative pressure. However, in the field of language policy and interethnic relations, Ukraine managed to gain success. Ukraine was one of the few post-Soviet states where there was no interethnic conflict. Over the years of Sovietization in Ukraine, as in the most countries of the former Soviet Union, almost everyone understood Russian. It was spoken by many, but only in the imagination of Putin's propaganda did the Russian speakers suffer harassment. The political mobilization of Russian speakers has got its momentum in 2014. We are convinced that Putin doesn’t play fair, despite his desire to convince everybody that he does! In fact, the “protection” of Russians and Russian speakers was one of the reasons for the annexation of Crimea and aggression in Eastern Ukraine. The media in the Russian Federation (as well as the media from around the globe that had received their salary from the Kremlin) constantly repeated and still repeat “the Russians (Russian speakers, whatever) need protection from nationalists in Kyiv...” Applying the value free approach, we try to determine whether this political mobilization of Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens could be Putin’s labelled cards, a threat to the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Do Russian speakers face an oppression, which the Kremlin propaganda constantly speaks of? Is it possible to communicate freely in Russian in Ukraine without any fear of xenophobia? Could multiculturalism practices be helpful in Ukraine?