The Ukraine Crisis: Ethno-Linguistic Perspective

There is no gainsaying the fact that, 22 years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia is still counting on the losses of that historical development. Apart from losing its position as a regional power, especially among the former union republics of the former USSR, Russia is yet to come to terms with losing Crimea, which it considers as the first great price wrestled from the Ottoman Empire, a mark to Russia’s rise to great-power status, and a warm-water port with direct access to the Mediterranean and thus, the wider world; and also Sevastopol, the Crimean port city where Russian Black Sea fleet docks. No wonder, Russia had already started celebrating the annexation of Crimea, thus escalating crisis in that region. A lot has been written about this crisis but a little, if at all, has been said about the ethno-linguistic dimension of the crisis, hence, this piece. An effort is made in this paper to critically analyze the historical background of Ukrainian and Russian languages in Ukraine and the state of Ukrainian language in the Soviet era. Also analyzed is the new language law in Ukraine and how all these contribute to the present Ukrainian crisis. The work concludes that Ukraine is a bilingual country and that the government of the country will do well to maintain the status quo