Kyiv professor fired for speaking Russian
Evgenia Bilchenko, a professor at the Department of Cultural Studies at the Kyiv National Pedagogical University named after Mikhail Drahomanov, was fired for a Facebook post in which she criticized the language law and discrimination against the Russian language in Ukraine.
She explained how this happened on the NASH TV channel, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
According to her, everything happened “in a typical late Soviet style.”
“The leaders of public organizations gathered and directly appointed heads of public organizations at the meeting - this is almost a quote (from the decision on dismissal). That I spoke out against Ukraine in my Facebook post. Based on the fact that I criticized the language law in my post, which is contrary to the interests of Ukraine.
Is criticism of the law prohibited in a country that goes to Europe? Which has no idea what multiculturalism is. The rights of even tiny ethnic groups are spelled out in the Europe of Regions document,” Bilchenko said.
She called the accusation of “anti-Ukrainian propaganda” “a blatant lie in the spirit of the Komsomol members.”
“I’m not being fired because I don’t know Ukrainian. I teach in Ukrainian. But because I, a “Kremlin agent,” dared to criticize the law. Any cultured person knows what ancient democracy was. Law (which is the basis of the European legal system) was a norm that is adopted as a result of critical discussion and is subject to discussion rethinking.
In what country is there a ban on rational criticism of a law that has so many controversial aspects? You are discussing the law on the show. And I was fired from the university for anti-Ukrainian propaganda. It's a lie. Impudent. In the spirit of Komsomol organizers. I was just talking about the situation of collapse associated with the social split that this law brings.
To force a person who does not speak Ukrainian... half of the population of Ukraine are Russian speakers. To force them to speak Ukrainian, acting on them using gendarme methods, socially stigmatizing and branding, means causing hatred towards everything Ukrainian. Even a person who is indifferent will become an Ucrinophobe. Because of this law.
What actually governs the law? The desire to destroy the Russian component of Ukrainian culture. The authors are not interested in the Ukrainian language, they are interested in putting pressure on Russian speakers as internal enemies. What is this if not a social conflict?” the professor concluded.
It is noteworthy that Bilchenko was previously a supporter of Euromaidan, calling herself a “Right Sector volunteer,” but in mid-2015 she began advocating for an end to the war in Donbass, which she characterizes as a civil conflict.
In 2017, she visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, after which she stated that the Ukrainian media were unjustifiably denigrating Russia.
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