Yaroslav Karpelyuk, a schoolboy in Latvia, wrote a letter to President Putin, asking for help in getting an education in Russian, which is his native language.
The President’s reply, which was handed to Yaroslav Karpelyuk, a pupil of the fourth form of a Riga grammar school, by Russian ambassador to Latvia Igor Studennikov, read:
“Thank you for your letter. I am glad you love your school named after Mikhail Lomonosov, a famous scientist and humanist.
“I understand your desire to be educated, to study in your native language. In many countries of the world children from large ethnic communities have that right. For modern Europe it is a criterion of the level of democratic development of this or that country.
“It is clear from your letter that you are a person who is not going to tolerate injustice, that you know how to stand up for yourself and your convictions. And you are not alone in that, which is especially important. I regard this as a guarantee that the Russian language, which has been spoken in Latvia for several centuries, will continue to be spoken there in the future. In my opinion, it will only benefit Latvian society, will enrich Latvian culture and will promote the development of economic cooperation and truly good-neighbourly relations between the two countries. This is what we are striving for here in Russia.”
This is the second time this year that President Putin has responded to Latvian school students’ letters.
In April of this year he sent a reply to pupils of a secondary school in the town of Limbazi.
Latvia’s Russian speakers are protesting against the switch to teaching in Latvian in the senior forms of Russian schools, scheduled for 2004.