Language policy in the Ukraine as an instrument of national ethnic discrimination

The work is dedicated to the contemporary language situation in Ukraine, which turned out to be discriminatory for the Russian language. The article also touches upon the process of formation of the Russian and Ukrainian languages from a historical point of view, since the formation of the Old Russian language and the emergence of regional languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. The author looks upon the status of the Great Russian and Ruthenian languages in the Russian empire, as well as language policy transformations in the Soviet Union and the role of both the Russian and the Ukrainian ones in independent Ukraine.