Ukrainian Crackdown Chief Sues for Right to Speak Russian

Ukraine's Interior Ministry, responsible for crackdowns against Russian-language speakers, has sued for Interior Minister Arsen Avakov's right to use Russian in official statements.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, one of the main architects of the crackdown on Ukraine's Russian language rights supporters after Ukraine's 2014 coup, has sued for the right to speak Russian in official statements after a court told him to provide translations into Ukrainian.

Avakov, who is from Kharkiv in Eastern Ukraine, where most of the population speak Russian as a first language, does not speak Ukrainian, but has been ordered by a Ukrainian court to use the language after a lawyer from Lviv sued the ministry over a Russian-language YouTube video. Lawyer Svyatoslav Litynskyy successfully sued the Interior Ministry for refusing to speak Ukrainian.

"Guess what Mr. Arsen Avakov has prepared for us for Ukrainian Language Day? The appeal regarding speeches by the minister in a foreign language has been scheduled for November 9," Litynskyy wrote on his Facebook page.

Ukraine's post-coup government passed an bill to rescind Ukraine's language law, which gave the Russian language minority status in some regions; the ban was never signed into law. Avakov was appointed the country's Interior Minister several days after the the bill was passed.

The passage of the bill led to widespread protests across primarily Russian-speaking southeastern Ukraine, which the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, headed by Avakov, took a major role in suppressing.