"Of course, the decision on the issue of TV and radio broadcasting in Ukraine was adopted on the eve of the documents' ratification as if on purpose. One shouldn't give in to panic and bring these issues to the sphere of confrontation," the Russian president said at the concluding session of the Russo-Ukrainian Interparliamentary conference.
"Russia proceeds from the fact that we created and will create conditions for learning and using the Ukrainian language in places where Ukrainians compactly reside. We will do it," Putin said.
"I don't want to speak about this any longer. This is an internal affair of Ukraine. I hope for common sense and address those in Ukraine who think Russian to be their native language, who think in it," Putin said.
(Ukraine's National Council for TV and Radio Broadcasting approved April 14 recommendations for national and interregional TV channels. In line with the document, national TV channels must air only programs in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma called these recommendations unconstitutional. "This decision is out of line with Ukraine's Constitution," Kuchma said in Bakhchisarai (Crimea) Thursday.) "We want to take a worthy position in international division of labor. We have a high cadre and scientific potential, intellectual potential. We want to increase it and take a worthy position in the world economy. But we can only do it through joining efforts," the Russian president said.
"Both Russia and Ukraine have an intention to be integrated into European economic processes. Russia is not interested in confining itself to oil and gas deliveries onto the world market, just as, I think, no one in Ukraine wants to sell buryak (brown coal, which Ukraine's main coal producing region in the east of the country, Donbass, is rich in), the more so as nobody needs buryak there [on world markets]," said the Russian head of state.
