Well, that raises a question. Are 120 million Russians upset merely because Russian speaking children in Ukraine will be educated in Ukrainian (while still enjoying the legally guaranteed ability to learn Russian in school)? That seems implausible to me, and not consistent with the Russian media I've seen. I think most of the Russians in support of the war think that much worse things are happening than that. What's your sense?
Cultural repression is a matter of degree, of course, and I'm a bit cautious about making pronouncements about what is serious and what is not. But I'll put it this way: on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is "no problem" and 10 is "special military operation," I'd rate the level of repression we've been discussing in this thread far closer to a 1 than a 10.
And, of course, we haven't discussed the fact that part of the justification for the Ukrainian language laws has been to undo decades of de-Ukrainianization at the hands of the Soviet Union. It's hard to say how to actually weigh these competing interests, so I won't try. But it is certainly there.
I'm not justifying the war here. I'm merely stating that being Russian-speaking in Ukraine was a lousy deal for a long time. And we're talking about whole regions here, not ordinary families.
Russian speaking people don't need to learn Russian in school (that much) since obviously they already know it. They need to study in Russian because, among other things, this is the tool they already have.
Here you go.
"Certainly far worse happens to other cultures around the world and nobody bats an eyelash."
Unfortunately for Ukraine, there are 120 million russians in Russia who do bat an eyelash about this.