KIEV, Aug. 8 – Ignoring calls from politicians and warnings of confrontation from opposition groups, President Viktor Yanukovych on Wednesday signed controversial legislation that dramatically elevates the use of the Russian language in Ukraine.

“What Russian emperors and Soviet general secretaries had failed to do, Yanukovych managed to succeed,” Oleh Medvedev, a strategist for the opposition Batkivshchyna party, said. “The death sentence to the Ukrainian language has been signed.”

The legislation allows many Ukrainian regions to declare Russian as their second official language and to use it widely by local governments, courts and schools.

It de-facto discourages millions of people living in eastern and southern regions of Ukraine from learning the Ukrainian language, which had suffered tremendously during 70 years of the Soviet rule.

“The legislation clearly uses technology of totally freeing Ukraine from the formally state Ukrainian language and completely displacing it from all spheres of civil society, turning it into a dead language, similar to Latin,” Medvedev said.

Yanukovych also ordered the government to create a team of experts to look into the issue and come up with amendments allegedly aimed at supporting the Ukrainian language.

But the opposition was not impressed.

“They did everything to burn with a nuclear explosion the remaining use of the Ukrainian language in media environment,” Medvedev said. “And, now - the top cynical move - they promised a program to support the Ukrainian language.”

The legislation shows that the Regions Party “delivers upon its election promises,” Vadym Kolesnichenko, a Regions Party lawmaker who drafted the bill, said. “The law provides for protection of human rights and implements Ukraine’s commitments before the Council of Europe.”

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

Yanukovych’s move comes a day after a group of dignitaries, led by former President Leonid Kravchuk, flew to Crimea for a special meeting with the president to try to persuade him against singing the legislation.

Yanukovych reportedly told the group that he understands the problem and that he will suggest amendments to the legislation in September that would alleviate the problem.

The language bill was approved on July 3 in a controversial vote that triggered a political crisis in Ukraine with Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn submitting his resignation.

But the Regions Party refused to support Lytvyn’s resignation, forcing him to sign the bill to open way for the bill to reach the office of the president on July 31. (tl/ez)