Ukrainian MP and deputy head of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Humanitarian and Information Policy Committee, Yevheniya Kravchuk, explained that the books were withdrawn because their authors “supported armed aggression against Ukraine.”
The politician branded the proportion of Russian books in Ukrainian libraries as “regretful”, noting that Russian-language copies account for some 44% of all books, with the remainder being in Ukrainian or one of EU languages.
Following the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, Ukraine has been pushing to sever cultural ties with Moscow through its ongoing process of ‘de-russification’.
This effort gained momentum after the Russian incursion into Ukraine in 2022, as speaking Russian has become increasingly viewed as a political issue and at times even deemed an act of siding with the oppressor.
Even though Ukrainian remains the only official language across the country, a 2019 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology revealed that about 30% of Ukrainian citizens speak mostly or solely Russian.
However, just a month after the Russian invasion on February 24, a remarkable 76% of the surveyed Ukrainians responded Ukrainian was their first language.
At the same time, a mere 20% of the respondents said they predominantly use Russian, and a third of Ukrainian speakers of Russian declared their intention to switch to speaking Ukrainian exclusively.
(pjm)
Source: Reuters, Al-Jazeera