Page 17 - UKRRptMay19

"We, including myself, are very far from provoking anybody," Putin said while in Vladivostok where he is meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "The passports-related issue is purely humanitarian."
Similar language laws in the Baltics have been a source of constant tension where ethnic Russian living there are required to learn the difficult local languages and claim they are discriminated against if they fail.
A survey conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology showed that the Ukrainian language is used by 32.4% of Ukrainian families, while Russian is used by 15.8%. About a quarter of Ukrainians use both languages, reports Reuters.
The language law will also inflame a Ukraine-Hungary diplomatic dispute connected to language.
Hungary has blocked Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO and the European Union (EU) since Kyiv announced its plans to amend its language law, which drew harsh criticism from Budapest, as some 160,000 ethnic Hungarian minority in Ukraine often uses Hungarian in public life. The regions on the Ukraine-Hungarian border are home to ethnic Hungarians who use Hungarian as their lingua franca.
In September 2017, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a new Ukrainian education law, which, according to Hungary, violates the principles of the Ukraine-EU association agreement, and Budapest wants to initiate a review of the document.
According to the new legislation in the future children from national minorities will be taught all subjects in Ukrainian from the fifth grade upwards (age 10). Poland and Romania have also expressed concern about the norms of the new law, which was mainly targeted at the Russian-speaking population living in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
Ukraine also has Romanian and Polish minorities that speak these languages as their lingua franca.
2.8 Two thirds of investors waiting for October elections to pass
Two thirds of foreign investors are waiting for the outcome of Ukraine’s parliamentary elections before making new investments, according to a new survey of 75 investors conducted by Dragon Capital and European Business Association, the UBJ reported on April 26.
Conducted the week before the April 21 presidential runoff vote, the survey found that 88% are interested in expanding their investments but are cautious until the new political situation becomes clear.
President-elect Zelenskiy accused election authorities of dragging their feet in declaring official results, a delay that would rule out advancing parliamentary elections from the October 27 date.
17 UKRAINE Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com