Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin states that the deprivation of the Ukrainian language of the state language status in the occupied territories is a violation of human rights.

"The language legislation was canceled in the occupied territories of Ukraine, which deprived the Ukrainian language of the status of the state language. This is not only a primitive imitation of the procedures of the so-called legislative activity of the occupation regime. This is a violation of human rights, of which the PACE deputies, the OSCE High Commissioner have been notified," he said an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency.

The Ombudsman expressed hope that the information that his Secretariat collects together with the Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Commissioner Liudmyla Denisova will become the subject of his annual report in 2021, and will be replicated around the world.

"Crimea and Donbas is Ukraine, and the people who live there are Ukrainians. They cannot be separated, including in the language issue," Kremin said, answering the question of what the language policy should be in the temporarily uncontrolled territory of Donbas and Crimea after de-occupation.

At the same time, the commissioner added that today, first of all, we need to talk about better access for children from the occupied territories to Ukrainian education.

When asked whether it would be necessary to adopt certain transitional provisions of the law on the language after the de-occupation of the territories, Kremin said that this issue is up to the Verkhovna Rada.