Doctor of law Krasnov lamented the fact that Ukrainian was declared the only national language as this did not account for the cultural and ethnic diversity in several regions with a majority of Russian speakers.

Director of the Institute of Political Studies, Sergey Markov, also noted the problem as “65% of the Ukrainians speak Russian and even the Ukrainian web is 70-75% Russian”.

“The people in Ukraine’s southeast will certainly never understand the president’s unwillingness to grant Russian the status of the second national language,” Markov, who is also a member of the Civic Chamber told ITAR-TASS.