Despite Russia’s war of aggression and ongoing Ukrainization, Russian is still often spoken in school playgrounds. Why? DW spoke with students, parents, teachers and experts.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many Russian-speaking Ukrainians deliberately decided to refrain from using Russian in daily life and to speak only Ukrainian.
Over time, this initial emotional impulse seems to have subsided, and some Russian-speaking Ukrainians have reverted to their old ways. A significant proportion of young people in schools, and sometimes even teachers, continue to speak Russian to each other.
Nevertheless, the use of Ukrainian in schools continues to increase, according to a study conducted by the State Service of Education Quality of Ukraine (SSEQU) and the Commissioner for the Protection of the Ukrainian Language in April and May 2025. About 48% of the students surveyed in Ukraine, a bilingual country, said that they communicated exclusively in Ukrainian with each other, an increase of 7 percentage points over the previous school year.
But the finding does not apply equally to all regions. In Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, there is a negative trend: The proportion of students who use only Ukrainian has fallen by 10 points to 17%.
Oksana, who did not want to give her real name, is a teacher at a school in Kyiv. “The children speak Ukrainian in class, but when the bell rings, they start speaking Russian among themselves,” she told DW.
“We even have a boy who wants to speak Russian in class. His family is Russian-speaking, and he has difficulty understanding Ukrainian.”
Iryna, a student at another school in Kyiv, had a similar story to tell. “Most of the girls in our class speak Ukrainian, but almost all of the boys speak Russian,” she reported.
She herself spoke Ukrainian both at home and at school. She said that occasionally, however, she spoke Surzhyk, a language that combines Russian and Ukrainian and is widespread in certain regions.
Many internally displaced people speak Russian
Ukraine’s State Language Protection Commissioner Olena Ivanovska attributed the decline in the use of Ukrainian among Kyiv’s students to the fact that there is a high number of internally displaced people from Ukraine’s eastern regions, which traditionally had the highest number of Russian speakers.
Oksana agreed with this assumption, citing one student from such a family, whom she said spoke “Ukrainian with me, and when her father picks her up, she immediately switches to Russian.”
Oleksiy Antypovych, a sociologist and the head of the Rating Group, a Ukrainian research institution, was not surprised by the fact that so many people appear to speak Russian in the Ukrainian capital.
“In Kyiv, about 50% speak Ukrainian, just under 20% speak Russian, and 30% speak both languages. In fact, twice as many people in Kyiv say they speak Russian than the Ukrainian average,” he told DW, citing a study his institution had conducted.
“At the start of the full-scale invasion, there was a massive mobilization of internal forces regarding our national symbols,” he explained. Since 2024, “Russian is present again on the streets, particularly in Kyiv, and it is no longer frowned upon to speak it.”
He pointed out, however, that the proportion of people speaking Ukrainian in daily life remained stable.
‘Patriotism alone is not enough’
Ivanovska believes that a great deal of work is still needed to create a Ukrainian-speaking environment outside the classroom.
“Patriotism alone is not enough. The will of the state and a consistent policy regarding the language that teachers and school administrators speak is required.”
This is why she thinks it is essential that “parliament passes the bill to ensure a Ukrainian-language environment in educational institutions.”
Registered in October 2024, the bill defines the term “Ukrainian-language learning environment.” It stipulates that the educational process includes not only lessons but also breaks, communication on the school grounds, and other educational activities. If it passes, the authorities will be obliged to develop a system for assessing children’s language skills. However, it does not foresee measures that would punish students or parents who communicate in Russian.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-russian-language-education-pop-culture-kyiv/a-74931328
