Russian media have spread reports of “harassment of Russian speakers” in Ukraine. The reports refer to the words of Russian foreign minister Serhii Lavrov. He said that interpersonal communication in Russian was allegedly banned in Ukraine. Moreover, the use of Russian in everyday life allegedly provides for criminal punishment. It's fake.

As the Stop Fake fact checkers note, in Ukraine there is no criminal punishment for communication in Russian, especially for interpersonal communication. The Law “On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language” does not regulate the spheres of religious rites and private communication, this is noted in Article 2 of the Law. In the law, the Russian language is not mentioned at all and is not singled out as a separate category, it is only about the state Ukrainian language. There are no prohibitions on the Russian language in other laws and regulations of Ukraine.

Thus, Russian propaganda is trying to promote narratives about the oppression of Russian speakers in order to artificially incite hostility among Ukrainians, as well as to divide Ukrainians according to their place of residence. Earlier, propagandists spread the message that a war had begun in Ukraine because of the ban on the Russian language, and they also wrote that the Ministry of culture of Ukraine plans to remove Russian literature from libraries.