Zelensky told how to oust the Russian language from TV
If the Ukrainian television business is given tax breaks, it will quickly forget about products in Russian.
Vladimir Zelensky, the leading presidential candidate in Ukraine in the polls, stated this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.
He avoided a direct answer to the question of whether he would sign the controversial language law, which is currently being considered by the Verkhovna Rada, saying that “it needs to be deeply studied” and to find out the opinion of society.
The politician also assured that he would maintain mandatory quotas for the Ukrainian language on television and radio.
“The quotas will remain. The question is, what should they be? Not even that. The issue there is the regulation of these quotas. If you understand this well, there is a trick there, an addition with these quotas. In general: a larger percentage of the Ukrainian language, and then - different languages, because there it is necessary to give every language an opportunity. Because we have a really large number of people who speak Russian. You can’t take away Russian-language television from them. We have people who speak other languages. You see, there is a big issue with these quotas. No one will cancel quotas, but there is regulation,” Zelensky answered rather confusingly.
He also offered his recipe for popularizing the Ukrainian language.
“I’ll explain to you how a person who runs a big television business is a big taxpayer. If you were to reduce taxes for all large television media companies, which for many years have been producing, due to the market and due to relations in the CIS, materials in Russian... If you came to them and said: look, guys, here are two in front of you film. A film made in Ukrainian is subject to a 10% tax. A film made in Russian – we leave the tax as it was.
Do you think quotas would be needed? I will answer you very quickly. In a year, I, as a businessman, and all the major television businessmen, without the law on quotas, without these sticks, would switch mainly to the Ukrainian language and that’s all,” Zelensky added.
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