Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed two laws that strictly strengthen his country’s national identity, ban Russian place names and make knowledge of the Ukrainian language and history a requirement for citizenship.
The moves late Friday were Ukraine’s latest moves to distance itself from a long legacy of Russian dominance, an increasingly emotional issue since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine began last year.
Already, countless streets in Ukraine have been renamed and statues of Russian figures such as Catherine the Great have toppled. While such efforts to wipe out old Russian names have been underway since the fall of the Soviet Union, they have picked up the pace since the beginning of the war in February 2022 in a process called “de-russification”.
A law that Mr. Zelensky signed on Friday prohibits the use of place names which “perpetuate, promote or symbolize the occupying state or its notable, memorable, historical and cultural places, cities, dates, events” and “its figures who carried out military aggression against Ukraine”.
The law will come into force in three months, according to the Ukrainian parliament, after which local authorities will have six months to “cleanse public space of symbols of the Russian world.” Legal entities have one month after the law comes into force, she added in a statement published on the Telegram messaging app.
Vakhtang Kebuladze, a philosophy professor at Kyiv’s Taras Shevchenko National University, said it was about time. He, like many other Ukrainian intellectuals, supports the erasure of Russian names, even the names of great writers like Leo Tolstoy.
“It’s not about literature,” Kebuladze said on Saturday. “It’s about Russia’s imperialist presence on our streets and in our cities.”
He added: “We should read Tolstoy, we should examine his literature. But why do we need Leo Tolstoy Street in the center of Kiev?”
(March, Kiev changed Leo Tolstoy Street to Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi Streetafter an early 20th-century Ukrainian leader.)
Mr. Kebuladze also welcomed the new citizenship law signed by Mr. Zelensky on Friday, which requires knowledge of Ukrainian language and history.
Many Ukrainian citizens are native Russian speakers — including Mr. Zelensky. According to researchers, an estimated one in three Ukrainians speaks Russian at home, but many of them – outraged by the violence of the Russian invasion – were switch to Ukrainian as a sign of defiance.
But Mr Kebuladze, who speaks Ukrainian, Russian and Georgian, said it was fine if people continued to speak whatever they wanted at home.
“It’s not about private speech,” said Mr. Kebuladze.
“We have only one state language, Ukrainian,” he added. “And if people want to become citizens, they should know this language. It’s part of our identity, our culture, our history.”
Here’s what else is happening in Ukraine:
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Attack Drones: Ukraine’s air force said on Saturday it shot down four of five Iran-made attack drones launched by Russia overnight. the air force, in an opinion Posted on Telegram, did not provide any further details on whether the drone, which evaded air defenses, hit a target. But it was the second time in 24 hours that Russia had launched Shahed-136 drones: On Friday, the Air Force said it had done so destroyed eight of 12 drones deployed.
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Nuclear Safety: The United Nations nuclear watchdog reported hearing shells falling on the contested areas “almost every day” for the past week Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. In a statement on Friday The watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the shelling further underscores “the serious nuclear safety risks facing Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.” UN nuclear experts have repeatedly called for a ceasefire near the facility occupied by Russian forces and warned of the risk of a nuclear accident.
Kassandra Vinograd contributed reporting from London.
