The Russian Education Ministry has drafted a Ukrainian language textbook for primary school students, First Deputy Education Minister Alexander Bugaev told TASS.
“The textbook will be out there. The work is completed for the primary school. Efforts are being made right now to do the same for the middle school so, as we said, the materials and textbooks will be ready. Russian is the language of instruction in Russia but we will create every condition to study Ukrainian as a native language, just like other languages in Russia,” the official said.
Bugaev added that Ukrainian will be a subject for schools located in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics as well as Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Students will be able to choose how to study it: as a native language or an additional course.
“It’s right when a person has the right to learn and study their native language if they wish to. We are creating a textbook that will truly reflect the beauty and clarity of the traditional Ukrainian language which in Soviet times was studied according to our best teaching traditions,” he said.
According to him, Russian is the primary language of instruction in Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine, while the Education Ministry currently sees “no issues arising from teaching certain subjects”.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Ukraine’s occupied territories will be annexed by Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry vowed that no moves would be made to ban Ukrainian from being studied. In March 2023, Russia-installed “authorities” of the Zaporizhzhia region said that studying Ukrainian in schools will no longer be mandatory starting with the new academic year.
