THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE IN UKRAINE DURING THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR
On 29 September 2025, in an interview with the Ukrainian news portal “RBC-Ukraine”, the State Language Protection Commissioner of Ukraine (Language Ombudsman) Olena Ivanovska noted that compared to 2022, when Russian-speaking Ukrainians massively abandoned the Russian language and switched to Ukrainian, because Russian was associated with the aggressor, recently there has been an increase in the number of Ukrainians who are once again communicating in Russian. She explained this by society’s psychological adaptation to war (Kopytko, 2025).
The Language Ombudsman is an official appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and her remarks are a statement by the state on an important socially significant issue, but this issue has not yet been widely discussed in public or studied scientifically.
I have conducted research and identified seven factors that influence the tendency to preserve the Russian language during the war with Russia and the return of Russian-speaking Ukrainians to the Russian language after switching to Ukrainian.
The first factor is mentioned in an interview with the State Language Protection Commissioner herself: “<...> human psychology got used to war” (Kopytko, 2025). She does not elaborate on this factor in detail, so we can interpret it as meaning that the language issue, which was acute at the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, subsequently receded into the background in the face of the truly pressing problem of survival: the daily struggle for life in conditions of constant danger, stress, shelling, blackouts, impoverishment and the search for money to survive.
The second factor is related to the first and can be described as a factor of normalisation of life: for Russian-speaking Ukrainians who lost their homes and became displaced persons and refugees, the language they spoke before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is their home language, and turning to it is a form of psychotherapy. Russian, as the language of childhood and everyday life for those who were forced to leave their homes, is what remains of their past, a metaphor for the home within a person.
The third factor is the “social contract”. According to Laws of Ukraine “On Education” (Zakon Ukrainy “Pro osvitu”, 2017) and “On Protecting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language” (Zakon Ukrainy “Pro zabezpechennia funktsionuvannia ukrains’koi movu iak derzhavnoi”, 2019), communication at work and during education must be in Ukrainian. The law “On Protecting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language” gives priority to the Ukrainian language in more than 30 areas of public life: in particular, in public administration, the media, education, science, culture, advertising, and services. At the same time, it is quite flexible regarding the use of other languages alongside Ukrainian and does not regulate private communication at all. The third part of this law introduces the concept of ‘language acceptable to the parties’: the default language of customer service is the state language, but at the customer’s request, personal service may also be provided in another language acceptable to both parties. The provision of “language acceptable to the parties” is used on the same principle in other areas of public life, in particular in healthcare, transport, etc. In practice, this means that shop assistants and employees of any establishment are obliged to address visitors in Ukrainian, and this is accepted as the norm, but in further communication, the principle of “language acceptable to the parties” applies, and this language, when it is Russian for both parties, becomes Russian. In interpersonal communication outside of work or study, the Russian language creates an atmosphere of spontaneity, ease, trust, openness and homeliness.
Philologist and publicist Andriy Kyrychenko, who is a soldier and has been on the front line since the first day of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, calls this state of affairs in society a “social contract”, which he sees particularly in the army: “There is no such problem in the army. The spoken languages are Ukrainian, Russian, various types of Surzhyk; Armenians or Uzbeks speak their languages among themselves. All official communication is in Ukrainian. It is a kind of social contract” (Krasniashchykh, 2024, October 1).
The fourth factor is related to the previous one and concerns the fact that Ukrainian has the status of an official language and is perceived as such, with all the corresponding consequences. The official language is the language of power and bureaucracy, which in their addresses to the public use an authoritative discourse, characterised in linguistic practice by bureaucratic language. As the author of a column on the “Radio Track” website notes, discussing the language ombudsman’s explanation regarding the return of Russian-speaking Ukrainians to communicating in Russian: “If it is already difficult for people who have spoken Ukrainian since childhood to speak Ukrainian because of this massive attack of ‘членкинь’, ‘послиць’ and other linguistic distortions (such as ‘TsPMSD’ instead of ‘Poliklinika’), then what can be said about those Russian speakers who decided to switch to Ukrainian but suddenly encountered the nightmare of bureaucratic nonsense <...>?” (Kul’chyns’kyi, 2025).
The fifth factor is cultural heritage. For the eastern and central regions of Ukraine, Russian is not only their native language, but also their cultural heritage. A significant part of the Ukrainian cultural and scientific figures of the 18th–19th centuries, who created Ukraine’s cultural heritage and are now the subject of its national pride, enshrined in the names of streets, universities and other institutions, worked in Russian.
For example, the Institute of Linguistics of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine, located in Kyiv, is named after Oleksandr Potebnia, an outstanding linguist, folklorist and literary scholar of the second half of the 19th century, who contributed greatly to the development of the history of the Ukrainian language. Potebnia lived in Kharkiv and wrote his works in Russian. There is a street named after him (Potebni Street) in Kharkiv.
Poltava National Pedagogical University is named after Russian-speaking writer and civil rights activist Vladimir Korolenko, who moved to Poltava and lived there for the last twenty years of his life. His grave is located in Poltava, next to his house-museum on the street named after him. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, which is a central executive body (its activities are directed and coordinated by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine) and one of whose tasks is to provide “<...> explanations and recommendations on the implementation of the provisions of the Law of Ukraine ‘On the condemnation and prohibition of propaganda of Russian imperial policy in Ukraine and the decolonisation of toponymy’” (Ukrainskyi instytut natsional’noi pamiati), has issued an opinion on Korolenko, stating that he does not fall under the decolonisation law because he opposed the tsarist regime, had Ukrainian roots and fought for human rights, even though he was a Russian-speaking intellectual (Hrynenko, 2025).
An even more prominent writer, recognised worldwide, is Nikolai Gogol, who is the most powerful cultural symbol of Poltava and the Poltava region, where he was born and raised and about which he wrote in his world-famous works. He was also a Russian-speaking Ukrainian. Today, every site associated with Nikolai Gogol in the Poltava region is a significant tourist attraction. These landmarks draw tens of thousands of visitors annually to Poltava and the surrounding area.
No less significant a cultural symbol of Ukraine as a whole is the philosopher and writer Hryhorii Skovoroda, who is depicted on the 500 hryvnia banknote and who also wrote in Russian. According to the authoritative Slavicist and linguist George Shevelov, “<...> Skovoroda’s language <...> is, at its core, a Slobozhansky variant of standard Russian, which was spoken in educated circles at the time” (Shevelov, 2000).
Of course, these are just a few examples. There are many more Russian-speaking figures who were founders of Ukrainian culture and science.
The sixth factor: Ukrainians in eastern Ukraine perceive their Russian language as different from the Russian language spoken in Russia. Russian is the language of the aggressor, the occupier, and the aggressor embodied by the Russian media personalities such as Putin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Lavrov, Russian TV presenter and propagandist Solovyov, or Head of the Chechen Republic Kadyrov, tends to use vulgar, slangy, primitive language. The same applies to the occupiers, whose media faces are very often representatives of the Russian army, such as convicted criminals – mercenaries from the “Wagner Group” and “Storm Z” private military companies, as well as Chechens, Buryats, Tuvans, Kalmyks and Yakuts, who speak Russian poorly.
But even if Russians speak beautiful Russian, Ukrainians still perceive it as “another Russian” as opposed to “their own Ukrainian Russian”. Thus, Russian-speaking Ukrainian refugees living in EU countries often refuse to communicate with Russians in one language when they meet them. Ivan Chinsky, a native of Kharkiv who is now a student at a German university, says: “My mother’s friend took offence and shouted at her when my mother refused to speak Russian with the old woman. <...> At the same time, we speak Russian, but it’s like a different Russian. And when communicating with Russians, we immediately switch to Ukrainian, English, or German” (Krasniashchykh, 2024, June 9). In an interview with “Radio Liberty”, the well-known Kharkiv poet Iryna Yevsa recounts a typical incident: “My mother and I were standing here in Darmstadt, near a huge centre, in the square, and I was smoking and we were talking about something. There was a woman standing next to us who was also smoking, and when she heard us speaking Russian, she suddenly became tense. Then, after finishing her cigarette, she came up to me and said a few sentences in a very sharp tone. I don’t know German, but from the few words I could understand, it was a very harsh and unpleasant condemnation of all Russians for starting the war. Well, and in particular, directed at me, since she took me for a Russian. And so I had this strange feeling – on the one hand, I was upset because it wasn’t directed at me, but on the other hand, I was glad that people perceived it that way” (Tolstoi, Pomerantsev, 2024).
The heated public debate on how to treat the Russian language in Ukraine during the war gained momentum with 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and intensified even further after the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many contemporary Ukrainian intellectuals advocate the use of Russian in Ukraine in the interests of Ukraine. In an interview with “Radio NV” on 21 June 2022, renowned historian Yaroslav Hrytsak noted: “We must write texts or music or anything else with Ukrainian content in Russian. This is also very important. Russian is not only the language of Russia” (Tarasov, 2022).
The seventh factor: Surzhyk – a mixture between Ukrainian and Russian languages. On 6 March 2023, Rostyslav Semkiv, a well-known literary scholar, lecturer at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and director of the “Smoloskyp Publishing House”, noted on the “Suspilne” portal that today Surzhyk “<... > no longer is perceived as the language of a sick mind that cannot learn literary Ukrainian. Surzhyk is increasingly seen as a regional language, which it actually is, confirming the power of usage, the literary language norm. Finally, the language of Slobozhanshchyna or Poltava region has been granted equal rights with other dialects, in particular Halychian dialect. And this is also a positive process” (Semkiv, 2023). The same is said by such leading Ukrainian writers as Yuriy Andrukhovych and Oksana Zabuzhko.
Widespread in Slobozhanshchyna, a historical region in north-eastern Ukraine covering Sumy province, Kharkiv province and parts of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, as well as in Poltava region, Surzhyk is not only a spoken language but also a cultural language used to create works of art. For example, Poltava Surzhyk is evident in the songs of the very popular singer Verka Serduchka (the stage persona of People’s Artist of Ukraine Andrii Danylko), who took second place at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007, while Slobozhanshchyna Surzhyk is cultivated in the work of the hip-hop band “Kurgan & Agregat”, which is also very popular today. Art critics write that “<...> their rap has become the voice of a generation, and <...> they have changed the perception of Ukrainian music” (Levchin, 2025), “Surzhyk, which is often criticised as an “incorrect” language, becomes a real weapon in the performance of ‘Kurgan & Agregat’. They show that Surzhyk is not a flaw, but part of the identity of Slobozhanshchyna” (Levchin, 2025).
Of course, it is impossible to separate the Russian language in Surzhyk from Ukrainian.
Therefore, we conclude that during the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Russian language, which is the language of the aggressor and occupying country, continues to be used in Ukraine, where it has historically been used and considered the native language, not only because of the routine nature of the war and the return to pre-war practices, but mainly because it is psychologically comfortable and culturally legitimate, due to both historical factors and contemporary perceptions of the Russian language in Ukraine as their own, rather than the language of Russia, and as something different from it. The use of Russian in Ukraine during the Russian-Ukrainian war is supported by the spread of Surzhyk culture, the understanding of Russian as useful and even as a weapon against the aggressor's propaganda, as well as the “social contract” regarding Ukrainian as the official language and Russian as a “language acceptable to the parties”, which is legally based on the Ukrainian law “On Protecting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language”.
References
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Kopytko, V. (2025, September 29). Koly Spotify chi YouTube vydaye rosiis’ke – tce ne vybir, a manipuliatcia: movnyi ombudsman [When Spotify or YouTube plays Russian content, it is not a choice but manipulation: language ombudsman]. RBC-Ukraine. https://share.google/Dd8jrfRNgCyoAtgpI
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Tolstoi, I., Pomerantsev, I. (2024, February 6). “Vsyo zapekloc” v gorle”. Kharkovskaia poetessa ob ostavlennom dome [“Everything is stuck in my throat”. A Kharkiv poetess on her abandoned home]. Radio Svoboda. https://share.google/4XFdvIvreigMIN3be
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Image references
Alexander Potebnia: By Unknown author - magazine Kievskaya Starina, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12618567
Nikolai Gogol: Otto Friedrich Theodor von Möller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Hryhorii Skovoroda: [1], Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
