Ukraine ammends 2017 education law amid concerns regarding faltering support

[bionic 50,111]

1 hour ago, FfFfFfFF said:

Why don't you educate yourself and learn that Arabs and Turks in France and Germany are immigrants as opposed to Ukraine's indigenous minorities which lived in their respective areas that are now part of Ukraine for centuries or thousands of years?

Ukraine barely touched upon Hungary and Romania's concerns with this amendment, so the fact that Hungary will still oppose won't prove anything to anybody. If Ukraine met Romania and Hungary's demands then we're talking - but it didn't. Instead it goes ahead with a policy of ethno-linguistic assimilation rightfully recognized as discriminatory by the EU.

Here's a link that you can use for education purposes: hhhttps://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/xref/xref-xml2html-en.asp?fileid=24218&lang=en

If ethnic Hungarians and Romanian send their tax money to Kyiv, then they should have the right to receive education in their own ethnic language.

Further to this the fact there is war in Ukraine doesn't mean they country is exempt from any criticism because they "have many problems right now". The fact they're amending the law means they have the scope to act and changing the law so they're oppressing cultural-linguistic freedoms but not as much as before isn't something to celebrate

[Dennis 8,391]

3 hours ago, FfFfFfFF said:

Why don't you educate yourself and learn that Arabs and Turks in France and Germany are immigrants as opposed to Ukraine's indigenous minorities which lived in their respective areas that are now part of Ukraine for centuries or thousands of years?

In order to refute what I said,he casually finds himself repeating racist theories differentiating between citizens based on whether they're children of immigrants or indigenous 

And you want to lecture Ukraine on how to treat their citizens? All citizens are equal before the law. Doesn't matter if your grandparents were there 1000 years ago or 10 years ago.

There are roughly 3.5M Turks with citizenship in Germany. They are a sizeable minority and should be treated as German as everybody else, if Germany considers itself a democracy.

So I'm the one who needs to educate myself? 

[FfFfFfFF 58,732]

53 minutes ago, Dennis said:

In order to refute what I said,he casually finds himself repeating racist theories differentiating between citizens based on whether they're children of immigrants or indigenous 

And you want to lecture Ukraine on how to treat their citizens? All citizens are equal before the law. Doesn't matter if your grandparents were there 1000 years ago or 10 years ago.

There are roughly 3.5M Turks with citizenship in Germany. They are a sizeable minority and should be treated as German as everybody else, if Germany considers itself a democracy.

So I'm the one who needs to educate myself? 

Yes, you are in dire need of being educated on these matters: When one immigrates to a foreign country they are required to know the language of said place because they are immigrants. When one is born into a territory that is their home since 1000AD they should have the right to preserve their ethno-linguistic identity.

If citizens are equal before the law then they should have the equal right to learn in their native languages.

[Ayesha Erotica 1,963]

10 hours ago, FfFfFfFF said:

plus the Hungarian party UDMR is virtually always in governance - which became a meme in Romanian politics.

We are going to see what the EU will say to Ukraine in 2 days, I still predict something spongy like "we see Ukraine's future in the EU" but that there will be nothing final/concrete/legally binding and that Ukraine won't be any big step further than it was in 2007.

 

To Arabs in France:

Most Arabs who came to France came at a time when French-Arabic was in dual use in the Maghreb states. The descendants of these Arabs make up the majority of migrants. They knew French before they arrived because it was a common language in the Maghreb. In the 1990-2010 era, French was relegated to foreign language status and Arabic was upgraded, similar to how Russian was relegated to merely a foreign language in Uzbekistan, while still being influential. Since 2010 at the latest, Arabic has been by far the most important language and being able to speak French well is less often a given in the Maghreb. But this doesn't affect the previous generations that came while French was strong and even a desired language. Now, in the 2020s, French is competing with English and young people clearly prefer English and see less and less sense in having to learn French at all, while the Maghreb élites still cling to French and have concerns over English because they fear that English might expose Maghreb youth to liberal thinking.

To Turks and Arabs in Germany:

The two main differences to France are that Germany has not a centralised education system, instead it has 16 different programs for each federal state and that Arabs who came to Germany mostly came from Syria in 2015 (not Maghreb, not Frenchified) and the post 2000 time from Maghreb (less Frenchified), while Germany has more Turks than France. The demographic weight of those who identify as Turks and Arabs is constantly increasing because of higher birth rates and higher in-migration, while the demographic weight of ethnic Germans decreases. This is especially the case in the big city federal states Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen, where in addition to that ethnic Germans leave for the suburbs who are in different federal states (and then their voting doesn't matter for Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen anymore). In 15-30 years, it is possible and plausible that there will be a significant number of public Turkish language and Arabic language schools in Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen. It is more likely that some German federal states will start teaching in Arabic/Turkish first and before France because the rural populations cannot ballot against overvote it in certain German states, while in France they can, and Germans do not have a  language protection mentality like the French have. Language-wise Germany is liberal, it didn't declare German official at nation-level and has no language laws like France. Germany is more like a merchant that adjusts itself to its customers.

 

[FfFfFfFF 58,732]

@LoliLux Even if the ascension process will start tomorrow (officially), it might take decades until it's finalized, and a prolongued frozen conflict will be the ideal excuse to postpone indefinitely. This is basically how Serbia, North Macedonia etc are treated: they are continually told they will be someday allowed into the EU with no concrete prospects in sight. And now that we have Austria openly in opposition to the idea of fast-tracked ascension, it's pretty clear where things are going (Austria+Hungary+Slovakia against & others opposing it behind closed doors). But what the law in question really proves is that the legislation and institutions in Ukraine need to be reformed and Ukraine may not ready to accept these changes: the EU cannot allow possibile sources of instability just to bring forth a display of empathy, because it will then underminde the whole system.

But now that you mention these ascension talks, I am kinda starting to get hyped. Not because I don't know what to expect, but because I want to see the specific wording and what can be read onto it.  

[Ayesha Erotica 1,963]

8 hours ago, FfFfFfFF said:

@LoliLux  a prolongued frozen conflict will be the ideal excuse to postpone indefinitely. This is basically how Serbia, North Macedonia etc are treated

 I am kinda starting to get hyped. Not because I don't know what to expect, but because I want to see the specific wording and what can be read onto it.  

I'm curious for the excuses and how they are framed, too, and whether they are going to pick a state as a scapegoat, or take collective guilt equally or blame  it on UKR not implementing the rules correctly.

Another obstacle for Ukraine is, that there is a lesser-known EU clause that requires EU members to provide support if a member is attacked ( https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/mutual-defence-clause.html ). Barely anyone knows this because most EU states are also NATO members and article 5 makes the EU clause obsolete for everyone who's already in NATO. Often NATO's clause is interpreted as obligation-to-going-to-war, while the EU is not, but actually  both are vague and ambiguous and could mean it and could not. Anyway, the EU clause would mean that modern weapons would have to be sent, and not 50 years old garbage that was supposed to go to trash anyway and the EU states want to keep their good weapons for themselves, so this is one more reason why they won't UKR let in. 15th Dec is gonna be the day when the true tea is spilled

About Serbia: Many Serbs actually already migrated to Austria, Germany, Switzerland (non EU) and Serbia suffers a massive brain drain and poplation decline, similair to Romania/Bulgaria, even though it's not in the EU. To my experiences, EU candidates want to access the EU because people want to have the right to migrate there [more easily]. Because of Germany's open borders [and the ease of getting German citizenship], they indirectly already have this right to migrate, so there is not much of a strong necessity to become EU member anymore (after UK left). Some of the élites want German subsidies but they have also local business that could be dispalced by German businesses, so this is a risk.

About North Macedonia: Greece pressured them to change their name away from just Macedonia. Now they have better chances to join. I think, just like Moldova which is small, NM has relatively the best chances.

Edit: @FfFfFfFF One more reason to feel excited is that it's not just about UKR future perspective on Dec 14-15th, it's also about Moldova - and MOL is gonna be more surprising. Let us cheer for Moldova to make it, we are now cheerleaders for Moldova, MOL needs us

______________________________________

Second Edit: @FfFfFfFF it has just been reported that Ursula von der Leyen has given the permission to give Hungary 10 milliard Euros, which it, the EU, previously had blocked. Although we don't know yet as it isn't 15th Dec; Hungary now might give a Yes to Ukraine. (And we are now waiting for France and Others to make up excuses, unless Orban will surprise us)

Third Edit: Orban has an "Ottoman empire" mentality in the way he is making deals. Poland didn't succeed with its approach, while hungary did.

[FfFfFfFF 58,732]

@LoliLux For some reason I still don't feel like Hungary would say YES.  He built his reputation for defending the rights of Hungarians abroad, he cannot change his stance like he did with Finland- because more is at stake here. It would transmit the idea that he abandoned the Hungarians in Ukraine, which is surely a big no-no for him.

Also relevant to these developements: today the spokeperson of the Government of the Republic of Moldova said:

"The European Council is to discuss on December 14 and 15 the launch of negotiations with several candidate states, including Ukraine or Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is a chance that there will not be unanimity on the said subject. It is one of the scenarios that the European community is intensively discussing. But this does not mean that European integration is put on hold, stopped or cancelled. If the decision will not be taken by the Council which is now in December, a new Council is convened, most likely in the spring of next year. It is absolutely clear that the Republic of Moldova has done its homework and is ready for the launch of accession negotiations." https://infoprut.ro/113995-chisinaul-admite-scenariul-potrivit-caruia-consiliul-european-nu-va-deschide-negocierile-de-aderare-pentru-r-moldova.html It doesn't sound too optimistical, it actually sounds like it lays the ground for something anticlimactic.

[Geopolitically Bosnia & Herzegovina is in a very different situation, I think it's even less likely the EU would accept it in]

[Ayesha Erotica 1,963]

4 hours ago, FfFfFfFF said:

@LoliLux It would transmit the idea that he abandoned the Hungarians in Ukraine, which is surely a big no-no for him.

It doesn't sound too optimistical, it actually sounds like it lays the ground for something anticlimactic.

We will see tomorrow how this will dramatically evolve - he cares about the votes of his voters and his voters might suddenly forget about the 1% Hungarians living in Ukraine when they start to think of what Hungary could do with 10 milliards euros, and then Orban can say Yes without betraying his voters. I believe money will solve this problem, after all Hungary is in the EU for the subsidies

Otherwise, I could imagine that Orban might continue to play poker and chase for the remaining 12 milliard euros (he "only" got 10 of more than 22).

Some people say Tusk (Poland) only won because he promised to get the EU subsidies, what the former government failed, and Polish voters wanted the money so damn much. The new Polish government is a mix of real EU attachment and fake EU solidarity (just to get the subsidies), unlike the previous gov that clearly was EU-sceptical, although it never really was that much anti-EU because it never made a leave campaign. Important to note, Tusk wants Ukraine to be in. So Hungary no longer has his Polish ally to say no

This also means that Ursula von der Leyen, who is German, already got Germany's Yes for Ukraine, because why would Germany give Hungary the 10 mrd € (and buy its consent) if it wouldn't want Ukraine to be in?  This means, Germany is already preparing and blackmailing other EU members into accepting UKR, and France is the only highly influential anti-UKR member left. Macron is now desperately trying to find new excuses. I suddenly got a new feeling.

I think, Germany is seeing the UKR extension as a chance, it is a country that it is looking West AND East, it has been supportive of previous Eastwards extensions and values market access there. Of course, its geographic position plays a role. France is feeling nostalgia and feels like "Ukraine is far and foreign to us, we will no more be the center of the EU after UK left and when UKR will join" - in fact, France has been the EU centre of gravity before 2004. However, I think, France must acknowledge that it no longer is an empire and that it is more in the league of Italy and not US/China.

Something is telling me that ******maybe****** UKR could get a Yes (my feeling went from 90% no to 50% maybe).

I think it will be interesting tomorrow!

[dit 46,738]

On 12/12/2023 at 7:56 AM, FfFfFfFF said:

@LoliLux Fun fact: I believe I have a great-great grandparent with Hungarian origins on my mother’s side That being said, I know less about the ins and outs of the Hungarian schools in Ukraine because of the language barrier. 

But like Hungary, I know Romania gives citizenship to Romanians in Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics, with the argument that Romanians in these countries didn’t emigrate out of Romania. They didn’t move out, other countries moved their borders to include them, so from Bucharest’s and Budapest's view they have a right to at least acquire their nation-state’s citizenship.

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Generally speaking, Romania is generous when it comes to this. Rumor has it there are genealogists in Russia one can paid to create fake family records for Russians to get Romanian citizenship (this is credible because many Romanians were deported to Siberia and the Far East during the times of the USSR and records get fuzzy in this regard).

The Romanian schools in Ukraine are concentrated in 3 regions across the Romania-Ukraine border: most of them are in Cernăuți (Chernivtsi) oblast, second in eastern Transcarpatia and lastly Budjak or southern Bessarabia - highlited the map to show them.

Quick stats - After the annexation of Chernivtsi from Romania to the Ukrainian Soviet Social Republic, the number of ethnic Romanians decreased by 75.000 bc of many were killed or ilegally crossed into Romania. In 1940-1941 there were 114 Romanian schools in Cernăuți (Chernivtsi). As a result of ethnic cleansing, the Fântâna Albă incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fântâna_Albă_incident, forced deportations and the colonization of Ukrainians from other parts of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the number fell to 92 (83 fully Romanian and 9 mixed). By 2016, the number further fell to 81 (63 Romanian and 18 mixed). As we speak there are 47 Romanian schools and 17 mixed ones. Outside Chernivtsi, there are 12 Romanian schools in Transcarpatia and 3 so-called ''Moldovan'' (euphemism for Romanian) schools in Budjak.

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Another issue is the usage of ‘’Moldovan’’ label for some Romanian communities, which artificially separates the communities into 2 distinct populations. In his visit to Romania, Zelensky said he will no longer abide by this separation which was introduced by the Soviets to saw divisions among ethnic Romanians, yet no concrete measures were taken. The textbooks in Budjak still make note of ''the Moldovan language'' instead of ''Romanian'' - I suspect you already know there is no such thing and that Moldovans speak Romanian.

In 2016-2017, there were 1.217 classes of pupils learning in Romanian (881 in Chernivtsi, 163 in Transcarpatia, 173 in Budjak/ southern Bessarabia) - accounting to around around 19.000 pupils - compare this with more than 36.000 pupils in 2001-2002. Since the 1940 annexation, the reality is that minorities in Ukraine face challenges of assimilation, they are incentivised to switch from their native languages to Ukrainian and eventually lose their ethnic identity - the numbers sadly prove this. As of now, worryingly even though Romanians make up 20% of the population of Chernivtsi, only 1% of their Google searches are in Romanian. This is why the 2017 law is the last nail in the coffin and why Romania and Hungary are so involved into the issue - the endgoal for Ukraine is the complete assimilation of these territories.

Besides the Romanians living in the borderlands in Ukraine there used to be rural populations of Romanians in distant places around the southern Bug, the Dnieper, Donbas and Volhyn and even Crimea, but they were the first to lose their identity and switch to Russian or Ukrainian (I believe the war ultimately made the last of them extinct).

@PartySick tagging you because this add more context about these policies  @dit I looked it up and there are no schools teaching in Tatar in Ukraine, only a school with optional Tatar classes in Novooleksiivska (Kherson oblast). But it's not like the Tatars living in Crimea have it easy - which is even more unfortunate considering Crimea is home to the main bulk of surviving Crimean Tatar communities, unfortunately Kherson too was hit pretty badly by the war.

thank you so much for this excellent and insightful post and for checking up in regards to my question about the Tatars. Yes sadly I did some research too and the bulk of them are in Crimea which is de facto Russia now unfortunatly. It's really sad that their language is actually listed as being close to exctinct due to restrictive policies and also the ethnic cleansing and deportations that they had faced not too long ago. All minorities in this region in general are in danger tbh...it's really sad. I'm glad to see Ukraine do some small symbolic changes like it did but it really isn't enough tbh. Romanians and the other minorities need to be able to teach their young in their language as they please as they are indiegenous to this region in general. Ukraine's current borders are a legacy of its Soviet days so all the peoples that were absorbed by the expansionism of the Soviet block need to have their rights protected..it's frustrating  

[FfFfFfFF 58,732]

@LoliLux The war and minority issues are drawbacks for Ukraine's ascension, but what if there will be some kind of peace formula (it won't but let's enter the realm of imagination ). This is a fragment from what Arestovych (Zelensky's advisor in the initial stage of the war) had to say: While everybody is becoming increasingly radicalized, he is actually sane and kinda spot on??  He actually touched upon Orban and the legimiate concerns about Ukraine's democracy later in the article. 

Spoiler

– Don’t you think that if Russians are now given the message that they don’t have to apologize for anything, they won’t understand their guilt?

“They won’t understand anyway.” The tragedy of us all – the collective West, Ukraine – is that the West had no intention of defeating Russia. Germany went through a denazification program after it was defeated. She received the status of unconditional surrender and could not put forward a single counter-condition. In relation to modern Russia, this is technically impossible. There is no force in the world that can defeat Russia or occupy it. There must be some other approaches to Russia; forcing them to repent is very tempting, but technically impossible.

- For example?

– Today we received very interesting information that from Novorossiysk a tanker with 50 thousand tons of oil arrived in Norfolk, the main US naval base. And it was transported by a German company, a country that is also “desperately” fighting Russia.

It is possible to enter into negotiations, not Russian-Ukrainian, but pan-European negotiations on the creation of a new system of collective security in Europe, taking into account the interests of everyone, including the Russian Federation, no matter how sad it is for us to hear this. Why? Russia has proven that it is ready to sacrifice 300 thousand of its military to ensure its national interests. They have an ideological component: fascists, denazification, we can immediately push aside all this, because this is software for Russian propaganda and their real interests, which are like those of any state.

And without taking these interests into account, we have no chance. We would have a chance if the West was morally sound and said that we are ready to fight this axis of evil, as Reagan, Roosevelt, and Churchill did. And current Western politicians use the same ideological constructs, but they are not filled with anything. They are not ready to fight evil.

We are all used to laughing that the Russians are putting up thousands of heads for Avdeevka, but I don’t think that NATO is ready to put up a thousand for the regional center.

 

[FfFfFfFF 58,732]

6 hours ago, dit said:

thank you so much for this excellent and insightful post and for checking up in regards to my question about the Tatars. Yes sadly I did some research too and the bulk of them are in Crimea which is de facto Russia now unfortunatly. It's really sad that their language is actually listed as being close to exctinct due to restrictive policies and also the ethnic cleansing and deportations that they had faced not too long ago. All minorities in this region in general are in danger tbh...it's really sad. I'm glad to see Ukraine do some small symbolic changes like it did but it really isn't enough tbh. Romanians and the other minorities need to be able to teach their young in their language as they please as they are indiegenous to this region in general. Ukraine's current borders are a legacy of its Soviet days so all the peoples that were absorbed by the expansionism of the Soviet block need to have their rights protected..it's frustrating  

I wanted to press ''Love'', but it just feels wrong considering the content of the message. Still, my reaction is a Like x Love x Thank you mixture 

[Ayesha Erotica 1,963]

@FfFfFfFF you were right that Orban is still saying No. The summit is still ongoing today, tomorrow is also a further entire summit day. EU leaders are now trying to change his mind. We will see how it turns out to be.

Interestingly, Orban did not explicitly mention minority rights for his No. He said that it is unclear how the EU subsidies will be re-arranged if Ukraine joined and that's why he mainly said No. So it's all about money now. He might have calculated that 10 mrd € are less money in the long run if Hungary will receive less subsidies in the following years.

However, if HUN says no, Germany will find reasons to block subsidies for HUN for a long time and HUN will have nothing won. 

 

Edit @FfFfFfFF: I think Arestovych makes interesting points. Indeed, Russia will likely not apologize, while Germany was forced to apologize and was heavily de-militarized after WWII and the winners of WWII had power over Germany and Germany wouldn't attack any other country these days, it isn't attacking Holland over the border disputer at the Ems river. Though, Britain and France also were never forced to apologize and they glorify their brutal colonial history (which is portrayed as not brutal) which is not OK. And the US never apologized for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think Germany is more the odd one out, while Russia is more a norm on international stage.

[FfFfFfFF 58,732]

5 minutes ago, LoliLux said:

@FfFfFfFF you were right that Orban is still saying No. The summit is still ongoing today, tomorrow is also a further entire summit day. EU leaders are now trying to change his mind. We will see how it turns out to be.

Interestingly, Orban did not explicitly mention minority rights for his No. He said that it is unclear how the EU subsidies will be re-arranged if Ukraine joined and that's why he mainly said No. So it's all about money now. He might have calculated that 10 mrd € are less money in the long run if Hungary will receive less subsidies in the following years.

However, if HUN says no, Germany will find reasons to block subsidies for HUN for a long time and HUN will have nothing won. 

I know Orban too well.  If I were to guess he is using a financial argument and not minority rights because he believes the financial argument is more convicing to Western European countries (minority rights are only or mostly relevant to neighbouring countries which have historical communities in Ukraine, while all contries will be financially affected by UA joining).

[Ayesha Erotica 1,963]

14 minutes ago, FfFfFfFF said:

I know Orban too well.  If I were to guess he is using a financial argument and not minority rights because he believes the financial argument is more convicing to Western European countries.

You're a doctor of Orbanology

It could result in German tax payer's paying even higher taxes as Germany will seek to approach Hungary's financial concerns [which secretly are shared by others] and Ukraine getting in, which will be a solution & only possible through higher subsidies in total. This is also how Germany reacted to UK's leave: it increased its subsidies to compensate for UK leaving, although legally it would not have to go higher than its previous quota.

To my previous edit: Since Russia will not "learn", neither apologize, the only constraints to its further expansion are its population decline & young men fleeing potential military draft.

 

[Ayesha Erotica 1,963]

@FfFfFfFF +++++++ BREAKING NEWS: UKRAINE AND MOLDOVA ARE ACCEPTED AND BOTH GIVEN A YES FOR EU ACCESSION NEGOTIATIONS. BOTH NOW VERY LIKELY WILL BE EU-MEMBERS UNLESS RUSSIA OCCUPIES KIEV AND CHISINAU +++++++

Ironically, we were both right. Ukraine and Moldova were given a Yes. And you were right, that Orban didn't give a Yes. In fact, he really did not give a Yes and you only said he won't give a Yes, not that he will give a No.  He didn't give a No either. He simply abstained from voting and bashed the result afterwards. Orban is playing theater. However, it is not necessary to give a Yes, it only is necessary to not give a No to Ukraine. So, Germany successfully bought Orban's surrender of resistance and he de facto agreed to UKR becoming a member. This is a historic day.

Well, I think, that after UKR and MOL were promised to become EU members, they kinda deserve the promise to be fulfilled. The border exchange and crossing between RO and MOL will become easier.