If Russian democracy ends where Ukraine begins, as a popular saying goes, then Ukrainian democracy ends when the conversation about language begins. The “language issue” can make anyone hate each other and lead to additional friction in society.

Ukraine’s new “Law on Guaranteeing the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as a State Language” emerged out of Draft Law 5670-D, one of four language laws registered in the Ukrainian parliament. All of these bills were drawn up in response to the declaration of the 2012 “Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law” (also known as the “Law on the Basis of State Policy”) as unconstitutional. This law, drawn up under the Viktor Yanukovych regime, was developed to extend the rights of regional languages in Ukraine, but Ukraine’s opposition criticised it as part of a “Russification” drive.

Immediately after the victory of EuroMaidan in 2014, parliamentary deputies tried to revoke the “Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law”, on 23 February. But acting president Oleksandr Turchynov decided not to sign off on parliament’s decision. The very attempt to revoke the law outraged people of very different political views. Two days after, members of the Lviv intelligentsia came out in defence of the Russian language. Parliament’s decision was interpreted as an attack on the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, and became yet another trigger for pro-Russian separatism in the east of the country.

In June 2014, newly elected president Petro Poroshenko called parliament’s actions a mistake. Having come to power on the idea of a “united country”, Poroshenko couldn’t permit himself to divide Ukrainian society any further. And in his inauguration speech he made a separate address to residents of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Russian.

Five years later, Volodymyr Zelensky repeated this address to Russian speakers during his inauguration - and received several angry shouts from parliament in response. The times, it seems, have changed.

Army, faith, language

In the 2019 presidential elections, Poroshenko ran for a second term with the slogan “Army, faith, language”. Bill 5670-D was approved in its first reading on 4 October 2018. Next came the process of amendments (some 3,000 of them), and parliament passed the law in its second reading on 25 April 2019. By that time, the law was already useless in terms of helping Poroshenko at the ballot box - he’d lost the first round a few days before.

But the language law can still be of use to the former president at this year’s parliamentary elections. According to party representatives, the Petro Poroshenko Bloc is transforming itself into an ideological right-wing party. Revitalising the “language issue” could be very useful for them.