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.
‘I started taking classes after the invasion’
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.
Oleksander is a 23-year-old Russian teacher in Kyiv who is originally from the Donbas. He speaks Russian with a translator who speaks Ukrainian, and both are able to understand each other perfectly. Nonetheless, he says, the use of Russian “will decline in Ukraine” as a result of the war. He has started telling people that he teaches foreign literature rather than Russian.
Until early April, members of the Saturday morning class in Vyshhorod were hiding out in their homes and taking cover in basements and shelters as air raid sirens sounded. Russian troops got within 12 kilometres of the town before being pushed back by Ukrainian forces.
Larissa was born in Russia but has lived in Ukraine for 40 years. “My children speak Ukrainian and it bothers me that I don’t speak it very well,” she said. “At the moment, I feel a little ashamed not to speak Ukrainian in Ukraine. I started taking classes after the invasion on February 24, and I regret not signing up earlier.”
‘It’s not just about learning grammar’
Over the past three months, Russian troops have allegedly committed atrocities in Ukraine under the guise of “de-Nazifying” the country with the support of Russian-speaking populations. In doing so, the Kremlin has stirred up powerful anti-Russian sentiment, even among those who have spoken Russian for decades.
Although they all grew up speaking Russian, the war has reinforced a desire among these women to master the Ukrainian language and forge stronger connections with Ukrainian culture. “We had one case where a woman worked at the post office and her bosses really wanted her to learn Ukrainian,” said Dora, from the Russia-speaking region of Luhansk. “But here, the most important thing is to share Ukrainian culture and get to know Ukrainian poets and authors. It’s not just about learning grammar.”
The class opened with a patriotic poem celebrating national independence. The closing words have now become familiar: “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes.” In the poem, those who resist the invader are called Banderites – named after Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who was a Nazi ally during World War II but whose supporters also fought against the Soviets and the Poles in the 1940s.
The controversy surrounding this figure in Ukrainian history is not an issue for Olga, who fled fierce repression under Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko during the country's 2020 elections. “We can celebrate all the members of the resistance who fought against the Soviets, the Nazis or the Poles,” she said. “The important thing is that Belarussians or Ukrainians can be free. We are living through historic times.”
‘The Russian language is not guilty’
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the latest battle in the 500-year-long fight of Slavic nations for freedom from Russian imperialism. But even among the youth witnessing Russian aggression for the first time, the desire to distance themselves from the Russian language is strong. Roxanna’s daughter Alissa, 10, accompanies her to language class.
“When I’m older, I want to speak Ukrainian and English,” she said. “Not Russian. That is the language of the enemy.”
For some Russian-speakers, links with Russia have been damaged irreparably. In Vyshhorod, Dora spoke for many in the class when saying that it could take generations to repair trust between the two nations. “The Russian language is not guilty for what the Russian’s are subjecting us to,” she said. “But decades, even centuries, will have to pass – until then we will never be brothers. The world has to understand that Russians have never hurt a country as badly as they have hurt ours. But we will win.”
This article was translated from the original in French.
