Shops with Russian-speaking sellers will be stifled by fines and radicals
The provision of the law on the support of the Ukrainian language, which comes into force in January 2021, will provoke corruption and unfair competition in the service sector.
Political expert Oleg Babanin stated this on air on the ZIK TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I can use a specific example to tell you how this will work after the introduction of fines. Let's take a simple village with a store, Vinnytsia region. Someone is opening a store nearby, but it is extremely difficult for two stores in the village to operate. Therefore, a person who opened a store can hire a couple of people who will come in and film how the seller communicates in Russian.
This is not difficult to do - you can ask one of your friends to speak Russian, you can simply edit it. And this seller, who has entered into corrupt relations with regulatory authorities (and this law provokes corruption in huge quantities) ... has the opportunity to issue a fine of 12 thousand hryvnia every month. No store can handle this.
This makes it possible to put pressure on any organization in the service sector. You don't even need to buy anything there. Previously, a person bought an expired product and could complain. Now it’s enough just to go in and take a video. Then people from radical organizations will come there, outraged by the fact that they speak Russian in this store, and will destroy everyone who is displeasing to them,” Babanin said.
On January 16, 2021, Article 30 of the law “On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language” comes into force, obliging all service providers in Ukraine to communicate with clients exclusively in the state language. At the same time, the secretariat of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language may, in case of systematic violations of language legislation, apply fines from January 16.
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