KIEV, July 31 – Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, ending his almost one-month-long resistance, on Tuesday signed a controversial bill aimed at elevating the status of the Russian language in Ukraine.

The move opens way for the bill to reach the office of President Viktor Yanukovych, who is now expected within the next two weeks to sign it into law.

“If all proposals from the speaker are rejected, then he is obliged to immediately sign the bill,” Lytvyn said Tuesday shortly before signing the bill. “Obviously, this is what’s going to happen.”

Lytvyn’s turnaround comes a day after a senior Regions Party official publicly warned him about criminal prosecution for not signing the bill.

The ruling Regions Party sees the bill as a crucial part of its election campaign ahead of the October 28 parliamentary vote, capable of energizing its Russian-speaking supporters in eastern and southern regions.

But the bill is vehemently criticized by opposition groups for potentially splitting the country based on language preferences, weakening its sovereignty. It is also feared to reduce the importance of the Ukrainian language, which had already suffered from the more than 300-year dominance of Moscow in the region.

The legislation would almost automatically make the Russian language the second state language in Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Odessa, Mykolayiv, Kherson, Chernihiv and some other Ukrainian regions.

This would effectively allow using Russian, not Ukrainian, in official documentation by local governments, courts and schools.

Batkivshchyna, the largest opposition party, said it will work to revoke the legislation once it returns to power. The party criticized the bill for an extremely controversial way of its approval on July 3, violating Parliament’s own rules and regulations.

“This bill does not exist in nature,” Batkivshchyna said in a statement. “The violations of regulations and legal norms were so huge that there is no legal ground for considering this pile of papers as a legislative act.”

Batkivshchyna warned Lytvyn that having signed the bill, it makes him an “accomplice of the crime” because the bill directly violates the constitution’s article No. 10, which names Ukrainian as the only state language in the country.

“This move has become a humiliating end in the career of a Machiavellian politician, who for the sake of his own rescue is ready to break laws and moral norms,” Batkivshchyna said.

Udar, the second most popular opposition group, led by heavyweight boxing champion Vitaliy Klichko, also criticized Lytvyn.

“Lytvyn has signed the bill that nobody had voted for,” Udar said in a statement. “Today’s act, after the farce with his resignation, is another proof of his dependence on the ruling party and disrespect to his voters, to his roots.”

Udar also vowed to work to revoke the bill. “Ukraine’s language legislation needs improvement, but this must be a professional debate involving experts, not a populist election campaign paper that is a far cry from European norms.” (tl/ez)