Was looking through the Russian papers to see what's being written about Politkovskaya - ran into an Izvestia piece on the "language issue" in Ivano-Frankivsk, titled quite radically: Diktatura Movy ("The Dictatorship of the [Ukrainian] Language").

It begins with a quote from Russia's foreign ministry:

"Elimination of the Russian language in Ukraine can no longer be ignored, [tough measures] now spread not just into the sphere of official communication, but to [everyday use] as well. The Ivano-Frankivsk officials have succeeded in this. In the city, it is prohibited to speak Russian on the premises of educational institutions, it is not allowed to hold mass Russian-language events and to paste notes in Russian. The Committee of Public Control, acting as the "language inquisition," watches over the observance of these rules. The Russian community's complaints aren't being accepted."

Then, this:

[...] Ivano-Frankivsk, named after a writer known for these words - "Study and leave politics alone" - has become the most Russophobic city of Ukraine. It is a miniature copy of Ukraine, which openly suffers from three problems: financial, gas and language. All of them are connected with Russia.

To read the rest of the piece, my dear readers, you'll have to learn Russian, and me, I'm going to bed. Na dobranich, spokoinoy nochi.

:)