The Russian Federation aims to raise the level of civic identity among its citizens to 95%. According to a decree issued by Putin, it is crucial to take additional steps to strengthen overall Russian civic identity, promote the use of the Russian language, and counter efforts by hostile foreign nations aimed at destabilising inter-ethnic and inter-confessional relations and creating a split in society.
According to the document signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian authorities plan to increase the number of people in Ukraine who identify as Russian and speak Russian in the parts occupied by Russia after the full-scale invasion in 2022. This information was reported by UNIAN, referencing Reuters.
The document, published on Tuesday, titled "Strategy of Russia's national policy in the period to 2036," appeared as a decree signed by Putin. It calls for measures to ensure that 95 percent of the country's population identifies as Russian by 2036.
It highlights that the long-standing ties between Russia and Ukraine, which predated the Soviet era, mean that some Ukrainians have traditionally been sympathetic to Russia, and many spoke both Russian and Ukrainian. However, since the invasion, any such sympathy has vanished, and surveys show that the use of Russian has undergone a marked decline, Reuters reports.
The publication also notes that Putin justified the full-scale invasion by claiming it aimed to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine and to free Russian-speakers in the east from what the Kremlin called blatant "discrimination."
Following the invasion, within six months, the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions were incorporated into Russia, though Moscow does not maintain full military control over these territories.
The document, which is to come into force in January, states that ensuring control over the eastern regions "created conditions for restoring the unity of the historical territories of the Russian state."
Furthermore, the document emphasizes the importance of "adopting additional measures to strengthen overall Russian civic identity," entrenching the use of the Russian language, and countering "efforts by unfriendly foreign states to destabilize inter-ethnic and inter-confessional relations and create a split in society."
"The results of implementing this strategy will be assessed by monitoring the achievement of the following target indicators by 2036: the level of overall Russian civic identity (civic self-awareness) – no less than 95 percent," the decree says.