MINSK, December 10 (RIA Novosti) – Belarus is the only country in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) where the use of the Russian language at home has not decreased in recent years, the Russian state-run VTsIOM pollster said Monday.
The most drastic decline in the use of Russian was registered in unofficial CIS member state Ukraine, Olga Kamenchuk, the agency’s communications director, told a conference in Minsk on Monday.
About 80 percent of Belarusians speak Russian daily, Kamenchuk added.
While both Russian and Belarusian are official languages in Belarus, the authorities under President Alexander Lukashenko have placed a heavy emphasis on cultural assimilation with Russia.
Other members of the CIS, such as Moldova and Uzbekistan, have pursued policies which favor the indigenous national languages over Russian, the Soviet Union's lingua franca, after their independence.
