KIEV, Aug. 7 – A group of Ukrainian dignitaries on Tuesday met President Viktor Yanukovych in a final attempt to stop the signing of controversial legislation that would elevate the use of Russian language in Ukraine.

The language bill, which was approved by Parliament on July 3, triggering a four-week political crisis in Ukraine, is currently awaiting signature from Yanukovych to become law.

Political groups and activists across the spectrum raised concerns about the bill that would reduce the use of Ukrainian language, potentially weakening the country’s independence.

“The president said that he is concerned about the status of the Ukrainian language and that’s why he has serious reservations against the bill,” Mykola Zhulynskiy, a former deputy prime minister and the head of the Taras Shevchenko National Award Committee, said after the meeting.

Yanukovych was widely expected to sign the legislation, which is thought to have been designed to energize Regions Party’s supporters that live in mostly Russian-speaking regions.

At the meeting, Yanukovych said he will create a team of experts that will study the issue in detail, but offered little clues to whether he was going to sign or reject the bill.

He said that the team will suggest amendments to the legislation that will be approved in September, potentially easing the standoff over the use of languages.

“I will work with this team, and the Cabinet of Ministers will work in a way that we have an opportunity in September to approve the amendments to this law,” Yanukovych said in a statement posted by his press service. “This is great that we have an opportunity for joining efforts.”

The group of dignitaries included former President Leonid Kravchuk, poets and writers, and other prominent figures that had expressed serious concerns about the legislation.

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, dealing a major blow to the Ukrainian language.

Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, who originally opposed the bill, ended his resistance on July 31 and signed the bill, opening way for the bill to reach the office of Yanukovych. (tl/ez)