A teacher in Tashkent was fined 6.8 million soms ($534) for hitting a sixth-grade student who asked why she did not speak Russian during a Russian-language class, RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reported.
A video of the incident оn September 23 went viral, leading to the dismissal of the school principal.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on September 25 that Russia had requested official explanations from Uzbekistan. In response, Alisher Kodirov, deputy chairman of Uzbekistan’s parliament, said that Russia should focus on its own issues rather than interfering in Uzbekistan’s internal affairs.
