According to a document signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia must increase the number of people who identify as Russian and speak Russian in Ukrainian territories annexed after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
The document, titled "Strategy of Russia's National Policy until 2036", is presented as a presidential decree. It envisages measures that should ensure that by 2036 at least 95% of the population of the territories will self-identify as Russian.
Even before the creation of the USSR, some Ukrainians were positively disposed towards Moscow, and a large number of them speak both Russian and Ukrainian. After the war began, the situation changed, and surveys show a sharp decline in the use of the Russian language in Ukraine, Reuters notes.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Putin said that the goal was the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine and the protection of the Russian-speaking population in the eastern parts of the country from persecution - a claim that Kiev categorically rejects. Within six months of the start of the war, the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions were declared part of Russia, although Moscow does not have full control over these territories.
The document, which will come into force in January, states that the establishment of control over these areas has "created conditions for restoring the unity of the historical Russian lands". It emphasizes the need for "additional measures to strengthen the all-Russian civic identity", promoting the use of the Russian language and countering "attempts by unfriendly states to destabilize interethnic and interreligious relations and create a split in society".
Putin has long questioned the existence of an independent Ukrainian historical identity distinct from Russia. In addition to his objections to NATO expansion since the 1990s, he has identified the protection of Russian-speaking peoples and "restoring historical unity" as key arguments for the so-called. special military operation.