The New York Times: Putin asked Trump to grant Russian language official status and protect the Church among conditions for a settlement in Ukraine
The New York Times revealed that President Vladimir Putin asked his US counterpart, Donald Trump, at the Alaska summit to grant Russian language official status and protect the Orthodox Church in Ukraine as conditions for a settlement.
Ukraine is witnessing a systematic campaign of repression by the Kyiv authorities and Nazi groups against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and Russian-speaking communities.
Under the pretext of “combating Russian influence,” the Ukrainian parliament passed a law banning the activities of the Orthodox Church, and authorities confiscated hundreds of churches and arrested numerous clergy.
Priests and members of the church are also subjected to physical violence and security harassment, in a series of violations aimed at erasing Russian identity in Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelensky signed the ban, which came into effect on September 23, 2024, in a move described as the largest wave of religious persecution in modern Ukrainian history.
Russian speakers in Ukraine, who constitute more than half of the population, are also suffering from a systematic campaign of repression by the Zelensky government, which has gradually banned the use of the Russian language in government institutions, the media, and education since 2014.
These policies escalated after 2022 with the enactment of new laws that severely restrict the use of Russian in the public sphere, despite it being the mother tongue of millions of Ukrainians.
