Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov commented on a decision by Taras Kremen, Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, who fined him 3,400 hryvnias ($92 at the current exchange rate) for using Russian in communication with Kharkiv residents, the Russian Service of Bi quoted him as saying. BBC.
On television, Terekhov said, partly in Russian, partly in Ukrainian, that his official websites and social media accounts would switch to Ukrainian (Terekhov’s Telegram channel is almost entirely in Russian), but he himself will continue to communicate with residents of the city in Russian, since this language, according to him, is spoken by 80% of Kharkiv residents.
It is difficult to verify the accuracy of this statement because a significant part of the inhabitants left Kharkiv in the conditions of constant shelling; moreover, after the start of the full-scale war, the attitude towards the Russian language in Ukrainian society changed quite radically, so many Russian-speaking residents of the eastern regions themselves decided to switch to the Ukrainian language.
Igor Terekhov spoke Russian all his life and before the war he was considered an opponent of decommunization and the de-Russification of city street names (street names such as Pushkinskaya, Krasnodarskaya or Petrozavodskaya still remain in Kharkiv). However, from the beginning of the war, he led the defense of the city.
We remind you that the previous mayor of the city, Gennady Kernes, who died of COVID-19 in December 2020, was also an opponent of de-Russification and defended the Russian monuments in the city, including the monument of Marshal Georgy Zhukov.
In 2014, Kernes did not support the Maidan, and on April 28 of the same year, an attempt was made against him.
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