Russian Speakers Reject The ‘Language Of The Enemy’ By Learning Ukrainian

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A monument to those killed in the war in Donbas, in Vyshhorod, near Kyiv. [Image Source:France 24]

One of the stated goals of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine was defending Russian-speaking populations who were allegedly being persecuted by Ukrainian nationalists. Ironically, since the start of the war, Russian speakers in Ukraine have been signing up for classes to improve their Ukrainian-language skills.

In Vyshhorod in the suburbs of Kyiv, around 12 women greet each other in the town hall where they have gathered on a Saturday morning. Dora and Roxanna fled Donbas in 2014 after the Donetsk and Luhansk regions were captured by pro-Russian militias armed and financed by Vladimir Putin’s government. Tatiana and Larissa are Russian and have lived in Ukraine for many years. And Olga, a Belorussian national, has lived in Kyiv since 2020.

All Russian speakers, they are here for the same reason: they want to improve their Ukrainian-language skills. Tatiana admitted finding the Ukrainian alphabet difficult. She has been coming to classes for three years and has made some progress. But “In everyday life, I still use Russian,” she said. Wearing a T-shirt in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, Roxanna said that Russian is her mother tongue. “I learned Ukrainian at school in Donetsk, but it’s not my language of choice. No one ever forced us to speak Ukrainian.”

Ukraine is a largely bilingual country, but long-standing tensions with Russia have caused a shift toward the Ukrainian language in official life. Following the 2014 Maidan Revolution and years of fighting in Donbas, learning Ukrainian became mandatory in schools in 2017. A law was passed in 2019 that initiated a process to make Ukrainian language materials obligatory in all areas of the public sector.

Now public sentiment is further reducing the amount of Russian being spoken. A recent poll from the Ukrainian Institute found that, in 2022, only 16 percent of Ukrainians claimed Russian as their mother tongue compared with 40 percent in 2012. More than half of respondents (51 percent) said that they only spoke Ukrainian in their daily life while 33 percent said they used Ukrainian and Russian interchangeably.

[AFP]