Legal status should be granted to the Russian Language in former USSR countries: RF MFA

The issue of granting the Russian Language a status of the second state language should be included in the agenda of Russia’s foreign policy, Eleonora Mitrofanova,  Permanent Delegate of the Russian Federation to UNESCO, said. RIA Novosti reported about this.

“After a generation we will come to the point, that people (in former USSR countries) will stop speaking Russian. For this reason it’s necessary to exert special efforts,” Mitrofanova said, adding that Russia should be granted a legal status in former USSR countries.

She introduced the data by UNO (for 2015), stating that from the population of 138 million of CIS countries, not counting Russia, Russian is actively used only by 61 million, 36.9 know the language passively, and 35.6 million people don’t know Russian Language at all.

“Even in Ukraine the young generation already speaks and writes Russian badly, lots of young people in Georgia, not speaking of Baltic countries, they don’t know the language at all,” Mitrofanova said.