Anonymous bill boards with Russian language propaganda have appeared in Mykolaiv oblast in early July, saying in Russian: "780 thousand citizens of Nikolaev region speak Russian. So do we need the Russian language?" On the congress of the Party of Regions (PR) on 14 July, Mykhailo Kruhov, who is the Head of Mykolaiv oblast state administration and the Head local branch of the PR, had accidentally said: "these bill boards will hang as long as we need" (see video).
"The Ukrainian People's Party (UNP) demanded that we immediately removed all billboards. They can whistle for it! Bill boards will hang as long as we need." - said Mykola Kruhlov. The politician also cited opinion polls of different years which were supposed to prove that the majority of Mykolaiv oblast citizens speak Russian.
It worth mentioning that the slogan on billboards is written in Russian without translation into the official language. It is violation of the language legislation. According to the Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine "On Advertising", the language in advertising shall be used in accordance with the Ukraine's legislation on languages. Article 35 of the Law of Ukraine "On Languagesin Ukrainian SSR" determines, that official announcements, broadsheets, posters, and advertising shall be in Ukrainian. Thus, advertising shall be given in Ukrainian, or translated into it if it's given in the other language.
OPORA activist noticed "edited" billboards, which appeared after 19 July with glued white tape with Ukrainian dubbing at the bottom. However, there are still a lot of billboards without translation into Ukrainian.
We used information from the online edition Prestupnosti NET.
Note:
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