Bollocks. They haven’t banned the Ukrainian language. They prioritised Ukrainian over Russian at federal level and devolved language decisions to the oblasts... shock horror, that’s exactly what America has done, and Canada, and Wales...
The current laws don’t just allow regional variations (Crimea already had the power to keep Russian or Tartar as its official language), it included special exemptions for Crimean Tatar and other indigenous dialects, International English language and the official languages of the European Union; Russian, Byelorussian and Yiddish.
And all the statutes passed on this topic are in the public domain and are easily verified.
The Russian federation by contrast has banned Ukrainian language textbooks from schools and even started erasing maps of the independent Ukraine of 1990s - 2014 from the curriculum.
Again... I end up fighting both sides in the same thread.
The Ukrainians sure as hell did obliterate every part of the agreement by which Crimea agreed to be part of Ukraine when Ukraine seceeded from the Soviet Union, including the agreement to allow Russian-language schools, Russian-language newspapers and Russian-language broadcast stations. Petrochenkov was absolutely a monster. But Petrochenkov also was routed in an historic, unprecedented electoral route the likes of which Europe has seldem ever seen.