EU country to phase out Russian language in schools
Schoolchildren in the Czech Republic will be stripped of the opportunity to choose Russian as a second language in the coming years as part of new education reform.
The country’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports approved a revised Framework Educational Programs for preschool and primary education in late December, with the document set to be presented to the public at a press conference on Tuesday.
The reform envisages English becoming mandatory as the first foreign language for all pupils from first grade, as opposed to third grade at present. Second language study becomes compulsory from seventh grade, with the choice “limited to three foreign languages (German, French or Spanish).”
The reform will take effect gradually, with the full implementation not expected before 2034.
The plans have come in for criticism from educational experts. In its article on Monday, Seznam Zpravy estimated that “today, one-fifth of children learn” Russian. The media outlet quoted Hana Andrasova, head of the Department of German Studies at the Faculty of Education of the University of South Bohemia, as saying: “I do not agree with the elimination of Russian. In my opinion, it has the right to life.”
Similar policies have recently been implemented in several EU member states with a historically significant proportion of Russian speakers. In 2022, the Estonian parliament passed a bill stipulating that Estonian would become the language of instruction in all schools and kindergartens by 2029, with funding for Russian-language education axed.
In 2023, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) suggested that the country’s new education law would introduce “potentially discriminatory measures affecting the rights of ethnic and linguistic minorities in education.”
Last April, the Latvian government similarly ruled that, from September 2025, schoolchildren in the country will not be able to study Russian as a second foreign language, with the gradual phasing-out expected to conclude by the end of the decade.
Despite a migration survey indicating in 2017 that 25% of the population in Latvia was ethnic Russian, only EU languages plus those of Iceland, Norway, and Lichtenstein will remain as options.
Moscow has repeatedly accused the Baltic states of discriminating against ethnic minorities and their languages.
Last May, Sergey Belyayev, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second European Department, told TASS that the “Russian language has been almost completely squeezed out of all spheres of public life, including the education system” in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania in recent years.
NATO boss warns members to start learning Russian
European members in NATO should either drastically increase their military spending or start studying Russian, the US-led bloc’s new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, has claimed, in a warning to EU lawmakers.
Rutte’s remarks came during a question and answer period at the end of the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE) on Monday.
While two thirds of NATO members are now meeting the bloc’s 2014 target of spending 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on the military, it is not enough to protect them from Moscow, Rutte alleged.
”We are safe now, but not in 4-5 years,” Rutte said. “So, if you don’t do it, get out your Russian language courses or go to New Zealand. Or decide now to spend more.”
“I just want you to spend more money!” Rutte added. “I’ve not committed to a new number, just saying that 2% is not nearly enough.”
NATO is, of course, the storefront for the West's war industry. Trump may possibly put an end to current wars, but spending on military madness has to increase or the West's economy will crash like a Boeing jet.
US President-elect Donald Trump has floated the idea of boosting the spending to 5%, but no NATO member – Washington included – is anywhere near that number at present.
Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister who took over the military bloc's top job in 2024, has constantly demanded bloc members spend more on the military since taking office. Last month, he suggested that EU countries cannibalize some of their healthcare, pension and other social services to find the money, and repeated that call on Monday.
The Western European military industrial complex has ramped up production to supply Ukraine, but its best has not been enough, he claimed.
“We are not where we need to be, not yet. Our industry is still too small, it is too fragmented, and – to be honest – it is too slow,” Rutte lamented.
Funny thing is, it would be more than adequate were it not for the war-mongering of NATO as it struggled to find its raison d'etre - the war in the Balkans, The Ukraine War, and now, as the war industry storefront.
The US currently accounts for 60% of NATO’s military spending. Without Washington, the European NATO members would need to boost their expenditures up to 10% of their GDP, which is simply unrealistic, Rutte acknowledged.
He pointed out that it takes all of NATO a year to make the amount of weapons and ammunition that Russia can produce in just three months. Moscow has an easier time because “they don’t have our bureaucracy,” Rutte said. He also claimed that Russia is spending up to 9% of its GDP on the military.
At a meeting with top defense officials last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin put that number at 6.3% and urged the military to use the money responsibly.
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