If you were going to argue that Azov guys wanted the death and suffering of Russian speakers I'd give that a pass, but this is just the opposite of the "Putin is literally Hitler" narrative.
Even the Venice comission, which criticized the implementation of the Ukrainian lanuage laws, admitted that they recognized the necessity to strengthen the Ukrainian language. Why?
Russian-language media is produced by pro-Russian agents like Viktor Medvedchuk in Ukraine. And what a surprise, pro-Russian Ukrainian channels were seen as a greater threat to Ukraine than Russian propaganda outlets as they had a higher credibility. Imposing a quota of Ukrainian language on Ukrainian media is legitimately a 200 IQ move. Forcing pro-Russian propaganda to be 90% spoken in Ukrainian either forces Russian propaganda to go back to less credible media, or that Russian propaganda is broadcast in Ukrainian which actually promotes the use of Ukrainian language. That sounds fair. You can broadcast propaganda motherfucker, but you use our language and thus help sever the connection between Ukraine and Russia. You actually get forced to shoot yourself in the foot, and all we did was tell you which kind of shotgun ammo you could use. You aim and you pull the trigger. That's what Ukraine told Russia. And that's why Russia made such a big deal out of it, they were afraid of having to either sever that language connection or lose ground in the propaganda war. Russian speakers in Ukraine could speak to each other in Russian. But Russians had to speak to Ukrainian Russian speakers in Ukrainian. It's beautiful. Simple.
Many European countries have similar language quota laws. For example radio is a big issue, otherwise 99% of music would be American. Quotas of 30, 40 or 50% native language music on radio are not unheard of. These are just to keep native artists relevant. Ukraine actually did this as a survival mechanism against Russia's hybrid warfare.
