Zelensky was not fined for the Russian language, because he used it when communicating with foreign (American) media, the language commissioner, Ivanovskaya, said in response to a Ukrainian News request.
"The use of a foreign language during an interview with a foreign media falls under the legal regulation of the third part of section 12 of the law and does not constitute a violation of the language legislation," reads the response of the Ombudsman.
"In case you didn't know, Russian is a foreign language that can be used to communicate with Americans. At least, that's what the language commissioner Ivanovskaya thought. I asked her why Budanov was fined for speaking Russian, but Zelensky was not. It turns out that these were two completely different Russian languages," Denis Gorokovsky, editor-in-chief of the state of Ukrainian.