Odessa residents will switch to language when the cancer whistles on the mountain - Saakashvili
Everyone will speak Ukrainian – even Odessa residents.
The ex-President of Georgia, former governor of the Odessa region, Mikheil Saakashvili, said this on air on the Politeka online channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
True, first something absolutely incredible must happen in Ukraine, namely, double-digit economic growth.
“There is no need to rape people. This process is underway. For example, in Odessa after the Maidan it was fashionable among young people to speak Ukrainian. Odessa residents told me that they voted for Yanukovych only because he said that everything in cinemas would be in Russian. Odessa culture is Russian-speaking. We had a dispute about the Babel Prize - how can Russian-language stories be financed in Ukraine? Well, Babel wrote in Russian.
I said: guys, why are we giving away this culture? Why are we giving it to Putin? This is our Russian-speaking Odessa culture, Jewish. This is our culture, our Richter, we cannot abandon it just because Richter spoke Russian, this is Ukrainian heritage.
But at the same time, the Ukrainian language must be developed in every possible way. As soon as Ukraine has double digit economic growth.. I was in North and South Tyrol, South Tyrol was a separatist region, now they speak Italian there.
They got rich. They are Austrians. It’s all very simple – once there was a poor area and that made them withdraw. They became part of Italy, richer than other Italians, and therefore they decided to be a little bit Italian.
If we have rapid economic development, Odessa will be the fastest developing city in Europe, then gradually and simultaneously, firstly, everyone will learn English, and secondly, Ukrainian will become more and more natural,” the ex-Georgian compared Italy with Ukraine .
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