The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky considered the petition on renaming Russia. Its author suggested officially changing the name "Russia" to "Moscovia" [Moscow], as well as replacing the term "Russian" with "Moscovian", and "Russian Federation" with "Moscow Federation".
25 792 Ukrainians voted for this petition.
The President noted that the legal aspects of geographical names are regulated by the Law of Ukraine dated May 31, 2005 No. 2604-IV "On Geographical Names". Names are subject to accounting and state registration in the State Register of Geographical Names. Regulations on this register are approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.
Zelensky also mentioned the international legal aspects of renaming Russia.
According to him, the statistical department of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the UN Secretariat has developed and published Standard M 49, which is a list of countries and regions containing the names of the relevant countries and regions in alphabetical order.
Their three-digit numerical codes are used for statistical purposes by the Statistics Division of the UN Secretariat, their three-digit alphabetic codes are defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The M49 standard was taken into account when developing the List of World Country Codes of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine.
"Thus, the issue raised in the petition needs to be carefully worked out both in terms of the historical and cultural context, and in view of the possible international legal consequences. Taking into account the above, I turned to the Prime Minister of Ukraine with a request for its comprehensive processing, in particular with the involvement of scientific institutions, and to inform me and the author of the petition about the results," noted the President.