“We do not understand. Speak the official language, please,” a student asks a Russian-speaking geography teacher during a lesson at one of the Chernivtsi schools. In response, he hears, “You are a brute.” Suspilne Chernivtsi wrote about this case at the end of November. After publicity and an official investigation, the teacher wrote a letter of resignation. The latest results of the annual monitoring of the use of the official language in schools show that cases when teachers and students speak Russian during lessons are not isolated. Other studies show that the number of children who communicate exclusively in Ukrainian outside of school has also begun to decline in recent years. The Suspilne investigative editorial office decided to look into this issue to understand why, on the one hand, teachers violate the requirements of the law, and on the other, children, even from Ukrainian-speaking families, switch to Russian when communicating with peers and on social networks.
What do official monitoring and NGO research say?
In the first nine months of 2025, the Secretariat of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language received 145 complaints about violations of the law “On the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language” in the field of education.
According to the results of the annual monitoring of the use of the state language in schools, which has been conducted jointly by the Commissioner for the Protection of the Ukrainian Language and the State Service for the Quality of Education since 2022, in the 2024/2025 academic year, an average of 14% of teachers spoke a language other than Ukrainian during lessons and 21% during breaks.
In the capital, the situation is even more complicated, according to the material on the Commissioner’s website: almost every fourth teacher violated the language law during lessons, and 40% of teachers did so during breaks.
Another side of the problem is the use of the Russian language among schoolchildren. According to the same monitoring, in the 2024/2025 academic year, only 48% of surveyed children communicated only in Ukrainian during breaks, and 60% during lessons. However, these figures increased compared to the previous year.
According to the monitoring results, children communicate exclusively in Ukrainian outside of school even less often. Thus, in the 2024/2025 academic year, 44% of students spoke only Ukrainian with friends, and 49% at home. In the 2023/2024 academic year, these figures were 37% and 39%, respectively.
As for the Russian language, 14% of Ukrainian schoolchildren communicate with friends only or mainly in it, and 12% at home. The rest communicate either mainly in Ukrainian, mixing it with Russian, or equally in Ukrainian and Russian.
In response to our request, the State Service for the Quality of Education emphasized that the results of testing sixth- and eighth-grade students showed that the language of everyday communication directly affects academic success. Children who communicate in Ukrainian at home and in everyday life demonstrate higher results in reading, speaking, grammar, and text analysis.
In 2021, Andrii Kovalov, a public activist, researcher of the language environment, and founder of the NGO “Spilnomova”, began to systematically measure the level of Ukrainian language proficiency among children in Kyiv. The reason was that in the kindergarten, which his son attended, only 2 out of 12 children spoke Ukrainian.
“I realized that this was a big problem, because starting from the age of three, my son would be russified, because most children did not speak Ukrainian. Despite the fact that all the teachers speak Ukrainian and the entire educational process really takes place in Ukrainian, this practically does not affect anything. Why do I say this? Because I measured the speech of children of different ages and I can already scientifically state that children in kindergartens and schools up to the age of 15 in the city of Kyiv continue to speak a language other than Ukrainian,” says Kovalov.
The public organization “Spilnomova,” says Kovalov, has developed a methodology that allows assessing children’s active and passive vocabulary, the average length of their utterances, and the proportion of Ukrainian words in their speech.
According to the latest research conducted in 2024, only 15% of senior preschoolers in Kyiv spoke Ukrainian at a sufficient level, that is, they named from 66% to 100% of basic words without prompts. Almost every fifth child, or 22%, knew almost no Ukrainian at all.
In the first school grade, the situation is partially improving: the share of children with a sufficient active vocabulary doubles to 33%; however, almost two-thirds of children do not know basic Ukrainian vocabulary.
“A child comes to kindergarten, where he/she hears for the first time “Hello, how are things?” and does not even understand the meaning of these words. A child does not know what “how are things” means. Therefore, we need to ask parents: if you want your child to speak two languages, Ukrainian and Russian, then there must be a balance. Because now a child hears Ukrainian exclusively from the teacher in kindergarten. A child hears Russian from peers, on TikTok and YouTube. There is no balance,” says the researcher.
Further, according to Kovalov, this escalates to the fact that almost every second 15-year-old schoolchild in Ukraine (41%) cannot read a Ukrainian text with full understanding. These are the results of the international PISA study in 2022. The indicator of basic reading literacy among Ukrainian teenagers turned out to be lower than the average indicators of the countries participating in the study.
Kovalov’s research was confirmed by the State Service for the Quality of Education of Ukraine. They emphasized that this is not a problem of a separate city or school, but of the entire country.
According to Ivan Yuriichuk, deputy head of the Department for Digital Development, Digital Transformations and Digitalization of the State Service for the Quality of Education, the ability to read with understanding is a key skill that determines a child’s success not only in learning a language or literature, but also in any other subject. If this skill is not sufficiently developed, a child will not be able to achieve success in education in general
“Children who communicate in Russian at home are most likely to have a poorer command of Ukrainian. Because of this, they cannot fully master the material: not everything they read or hear in math, physics, or history lessons is clear to them. And this, of course, affects their academic performance,” the expert explains.
However, Yuriichuk says that Russian is only one of the factors that leads to poorer academic results. They are also influenced by the socio-economic status of the family, the education of the parents, and the characteristics of the school.
We also asked the Ministry of Education and Science to comment on the findings of the State Service for the Quality of Education of Ukraine. In a written response, the Ministry of Education and Science explained that it relies on PISA data in this matter. The ministry noted that there is no connection between speaking Russian outside of school and children’s level of knowledge.
“There is no statistically significant difference between student achievement in reading, mathematics, and science between students who communicate and those who do not communicate in the language of assessment,” the ministry’s letter states.
In fact, the Ministry of Education and Science denied in its response the influence of the language environment on student performance. For additional comment on this issue, we turned to the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, Olena Ivanovska, whose position differs from the ministerial one.
“Language competencies directly correlate with the degree of assimilation of educational material. The greater and the better these language competencies, that is, the knowledge of the language in which the teaching is conducted, the better the assimilation of the material. It is always more difficult to perceive information in a foreign language through an intermediary,” answered Olena Ivanovska.
“Language carries culture and influence”
There is another problem. Ukrainian-speaking parents complain: their child enters a Russian-speaking environment at school and starts speaking Russian. For example, in May 2025, Kyiv resident Nadia Pototska wrote a column about her son being the only Ukrainian-speaking child in a class at one of the Kyiv schools.
“A problem arose in the first grade: my son did not fully understand the children who spoke Russian. For example, he misunderstood Russian words and did not quite understand his classmates’ jokes,” recalls Pototska.
Over time, the boy got adapted. Now, when he is 10, Russian words have begun to appear in his speech, in particular, through games and content that he consumes together with Russian-speaking classmates.
For the mother, this is a serious issue because it concerns both her son’s education and the formation of his identity. That is why she is trying to reach out to parents who speak Russian at home, explaining how the language affects education:
“If your children are Russian-speaking, it is much more difficult for them to learn because the entire school program is in Ukrainian,” the mother says.
Pototska is convinced that in adolescence, parents cease to be an authority for children and children begin to imitate the environment they strive to enter. That is why the first years of life are crucial. If parents consistently speak Ukrainian with their children from birth to 10 years of age, this will give them a chance to solve the language issue and raise a Ukrainian-speaking generation, the woman says. Otherwise, children will again fall under the influence of the Russian language and culture.
“Maybe no one in their family (of Russian-speaking parents, – Ed.) is fighting now, but their son, who is nine years old today, could end up at war when he is 20. It may seem that language does not matter, but it is language that carries culture and influence,” Pototska adds.
From “I do not care” to “genocide language”: a survey of students at a private school in Kyiv
Back in June 2025, the Suspilne investigative editorial office met with students of a private school in Kyiv. The academic year was in progress at that time. The school’s management gave us permission for such communication.
We interviewed eight students: four 15-year-old ninth-graders and four 16-year-old tenth-graders. We will not name the children. We asked them all the same set of questions, including what language they usually speak at home, at school, and with friends. Here is what they said:
“It is more convenient to speak Russian with parents and friends. In lessons, we speak Russian to each other, and we answer the teacher’s questions in Ukrainian.”
“I speak Russian. At school I can switch to mixed Ukrainian-Russian and vice versa.”
“I speak Ukrainian at school. But honestly, I do not care what language I speak. So yes, it is not really right that I speak Russian, but it is not at the level of some law now.”
“95% is Ukrainian. Everything else just happens.”
“In everyday life, I communicate in Ukrainian. This is from childhood; my whole family speaks Ukrainian. But when I am with friends, I switch to Russian.”
“In everyday life, I probably speak Russian more.”
“I only speak Ukrainian. Earlier, three or four years ago, I spoke Russian, but then I switched due to some circumstances.”
“80% of the time I speak mixed Ukrainian-Russian, about 15% – Ukrainian and 5% – Russian.”
Therefore, only two out of eight students constantly communicate in Ukrainian both during and outside of school. One student uses mixed Ukrainian-Russian most often in all areas. One student speaks Ukrainian at home and in class, but switches to Russian with friends. Three schoolchildren stick to Ukrainian only during school, answering teachers’ questions, and the rest of the time, they speak Russian. One student combines mixed language, Ukrainian and Russian both during the educational process and outside of it.
The next question concerned how students themselves understand what language is.
Two out of eight perceive it only as a means of communication. Five define it as a marker of national identity and part of culture. One student divides the language into official and that which is convenient for everyday communication:
“There is the official language, and there is the one you communicate in.”
We also asked students about the use of the Russian language in Ukraine during the full-scale war. The responses included:
“I do not care what language people speak. There are Ukrainians who speak Russian, but they have done much more [for the country] than Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian.”
“What matters to me more is the person, that is, if they are comfortable speaking Russian, I do not see anything wrong with it. But I still think that Ukrainian should be spoken in public places.”
“We are currently in the midst of the full-scale invasion and war, and the Russian language is very inappropriate in our situation, in this context. Russian is the language of genocide, and speaking it in Ukraine, in Kyiv, seems a little disgusting to me.”
In total, three out of eight students believe that the language of communication does not matter. One student noted that as long as there are no penalties for using Russian, everyone can speak the language they want. Another is convinced that many Russian-speaking Ukrainians do not realize the importance of switching to Ukrainian and remain in their comfort zone.
One of the students explains the spread of Russian by the popularity of Russian-language content, another – by the fact that young people often imitate the majority, which, in his opinion, is Russian-speaking. At the same time, both emphasize that Ukrainians should speak Ukrainian.
It should be noted that a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, conducted from February 14 to March 4, 2025, showed that out of 1,029 respondents, 63% spoke Ukrainian at home, 13% spoke Russian, and 19% combined both languages. Another 5% could not decide on an answer. That is, the majority of those who participated in the survey are Ukrainian-speaking.
Finally, we asked students at the private school in Kyiv whether they could fully switch to Ukrainian in everyday communication and what could motivate them to do so.
Four schoolchildren, who usually speak Russian outside of school and in class, and answer teachers’ questions in Ukrainian, gave the following answers: one sees no “special need” for the transition, one says he lacks internal motivation, but assures that he can be motivated by friends and society, and another admits that it will be difficult for him because he has spoken Russian since childhood. One student noted that school could help switch completely to Ukrainian.
The student, who speaks mixed language and Russian, emphasized, “Do not pressure them, because when people look for enemies, Russian speakers will have no desire to switch to Ukrainian.”
“Prejudice towards the Ukrainian language”
Our survey of Kyiv schoolchildren is not representative. However, the fact that a minority of high school students in Kyiv speak exclusively Ukrainian in everyday life is confirmed by the results of the official annual monitoring conducted by the State Service for the Quality of Education and the Commissioner for the Protection of the Ukrainian Language from April to May 2025.
The results showed that every fourth Kyiv schoolchild who took part in the study communicated mainly or only in Russian at home. Every third spoke it with friends.
Deputy Head of the Secretariat of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, Serhii Syrotenko, gives several reasons why this is happening. The first reason is partly related to the increase in the number of internally displaced persons in Kyiv. He emphasizes that the problem is not in the people, but in the russified capital.
“In Kyiv, people find themselves in an environment that tolerates the Russian language, or at least does not provide linguistic resilience. Therefore, the increase in the number of people who habitually speak Russian in Kyiv leads to a significant increase in the Russian-speaking indicator,” says Syrotenko. “In the west of the country, Russian-speaking people become Ukrainian-speaking, at least in public communication they use more Ukrainian, but in the russified environment of Kyiv they simply increase the percentage of Russian-speaking people.”
The next reason, according to Syrotenko, is that over the almost four years of thee full-scale invasion, the process of self-Ukrainization has practically stopped. If in 2022-2023 the Russian language caused rejection, now more and more Ukrainians tolerate it. Syrotenko adds that despite the fact that the largest decline in the use of the Ukrainian language among schoolchildren is recorded in Kyiv, this trend may spread to other regions.
Another problem, according to the expert, is that some schoolchildren are ashamed of speaking Ukrainian:
“Among the factors that hinder the use of the Ukrainian language, which children indicated, particularly in Kyiv, is the biased attitude towards the Ukrainian language in their environment. 20 percent consider it unfashionable and think that it does not correspond to their environment,” adds Serhii Syrotenko.
Psychologist’s explanation
According to our survey, the reasons for the refusal of Russian-speaking schoolchildren to switch to Ukrainian included the lack of clear motivation, indifference to the language choice, and a conscious reluctance to change language habits. According to Olha Holubytska, a psychologist and specialist involved in the charitable organization “SOS Children’s Towns Ukraine”, this is not a sign of a conscious position. Adolescent schoolchildren are prone to protests, since it is through resistance that they learn about the world and form their identity.
“The problem is not with teenagers, but with the society, which does not popularize the Ukrainian language. This is a long-standing trend when people are intimidated by the Ukrainian language. This causes resistance among teenagers because in their age, they tend to reject everything. So they join any resistance movement, any exception in the system, where they will feel their importance, strength, and power,” the psychologist explains.
According to Holubytska, an important role in this unconscious language choice is played by Russian propaganda, which blurs the boundaries with theses like “Russian is the same as English”. Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the media also play into the Russian language’s hands, broadcasting messages like “it does not matter” and “no one can forbid me to speak any language”.
“For a teenager, the scariest thing is not to be cool or to be worse than others. At this age, children are unstable and extra-vulnerable, so they will avoid as much as possible situations in which they can feel this,” emphasizes Holubytska.
The expert also adds that critical thinking is not yet formed in adolescence. Because of this, the connection between language, consumed information, and war is weak or absent at all. Teenagers do not understand how conversations in Russian can affect anything in the context of the full-scale war.
Moreover, the expert emphasizes that even a child from a Ukrainian-speaking family may switch to Russian outside the home if the environment or friends communicate in this language. This is due to the desire to remain part of the group and avoid rejection.
“In adolescence, children are capable of cause-and-effect relationships only when the family does explanatory information work without pressure. The family can tell about how Russian propaganda works and how it affects Ukrainians, for example, about how watching Russian content on YouTube helps Russia. However, this should not be educational work. Parents should speak with the teenager on an equal footing so that he/she is part of the discussion,” says Holubytska.
The psychologist adds that the main task of adults is not to put pressure on children, but to create an environment for them where the Ukrainian language is associated with success, popularity, and prospects. Then they will abandon Russian on their own.
There are no complaints against Russian-speaking teachers because parents are not ready to conflict
On November 21, the “Good Chernivtsi” Telegram channel published a video in which a teacher insults a student for asking to switch from Russian to Ukrainian. After the aforementioned insult, “you are a brute”, the teacher resorts to intimidating the boy, saying that he will be the one to answer the biggest number of questions in her lessons.
This incident happened at Chernivtsi School No. 5 “Oriana”. On December 1, the geography teacher was fired. The director of the institution, Halyna Abramiuk, confirmed this to us in a telephone conversation. When asked whether there had been any complaints against this teacher before, the director answered briefly, “I did not receive any complaints.”
A graduate of this school, who asked to hide her name, said that the geography teacher had previously switched to Russian during lessons. The girl graduated from the school in 2024.
Lilia Kovalenko and her husband, a former military man, are raising two children in Odesa. The elder daughter, Sofia, started the fourth grade this year. However, she studies at home. Lilia chose homeschooling for her children in order to create a completely Ukrainian-speaking environment for them. In Odesa, where they recently moved from Kyiv region, this poses difficulties. The woman says that Russian predominates among the children and it is not easy for the child to understand her peers.
“There was an incident when my daughter approached a girl on the playground and said in Ukrainian, “Hi, let us be friends. My name is Sofia.” However, the child just turned around and left. She said in Russian, “I do not understand you,” says Lilia.
Before the start of the new school year, Lilia decided to find a violin teacher for Sofia. She wrote about her search on social networks, and the main condition was to teach in Ukrainian. A teacher, whose name Lilia does not disclose, responded to her post and advised her to enroll in Odesa School of Arts No. 11, where she works. In a private conversation with this teacher, it turned out that the subject of solfeggio is taught in Russian. Lilia refused to enroll her child, and the teacher advised her colleague, who has a private Ukrainian-language practice.
The woman shared her outrage about the language situation on Threads. After that, the recommended teacher refused to teach Lilia’s child, emphasizing that she needed to find a “totally Ukrainian-speaking” teacher.
In a telephone conversation with the Suspilne journalist, the director of Odesa School of Arts No. 11, Dmytro Frolov, explained that previously the subject of solfeggio was indeed taught by a Russian-speaking teacher, but he had already gone abroad.
“We now have three teachers who are fluent in Ukrainian. I give you a 100% guarantee that they teach in Ukrainian,” Frolov assured.
Lilia’s post quickly gained popularity, and she eventually managed to find a music school where solfeggio is taught in Ukrainian. However, the woman emphasizes that the problem of Russian in schools is broader and concerns not only Odesa:
“I am outraged by the fact itself. It is already the 35th year of Independence. We did not gain it yesterday, a year or five years ago,” she says. “We have a law that stipulates that the language of instruction in any state educational institution must be Ukrainian. This is a norm stipulated by law. And why is not it implemented everywhere?”
In response to our request, the Ministry of Education and Science emphasized that the language of the educational process is the state language, that is, the Ukrainian language. This is regulated, in particular, by the laws of Ukraine “On Education” (Article 7), “On Complete Secondary Education” (Article 5), and “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language” (Article 21). The Ministry added that the Ukrainian language must be used during working hours by pedagogical, scientific-pedagogical, and other employees of educational institutions. Violations of language legislation may be punishable with fines, but such cases are considered by the office of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language.
There are few official complaints about violations of language legislation in schools. This is confirmed by the data provided to us in response to our request by the Secretariat of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language. In 2022, 27 appeals were recorded, the same number in 2023, 25 in 2024, and 21 appeals in the first half of 2025.
Olena Ivanovska, the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, explains that there are few appeals because parents are not ready to conflict with the school. “Parents rarely file complaints against teachers. They should be consistent, enter into an open conflict with the administration, with the teacher, if the child’s rights are violated,” she says. “But many simply turn a blind eye because they want their child to finish studies successfully.”
As the language ombudswoman explains, a teacher who teaches in Russian can be held liable for violating the law “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language”:
“If the offense occurs for the first time, they resort to a warning. If it is committed repeatedly, then a fine of 3,400 hryvnias or more. However, if to consider this in a systematic way, then it is already a matter of failure to fulfill functional duties. Then the director can make the personnel decision,” says Ivanovska.
During our conversation, the ombudswoman noted that during the first months of her work as Commissioner for the Protection of the Ukrainian Language, there were no cases of teachers being held accountable.
The position of relevant authorities
Deputy Head of the Secretariat of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, Serhii Syrotenko, believes that it is necessary to systematically monitor the language situation in schools, raise awareness of children and parents about language rights, and create clear instructions on how to file complaints against teachers who speak Russian within the school. He emphasizes that the number of violations has long been disproportionate to the number of official appeals. No less important, in his opinion, is the updating of the regulatory framework.
“There is a registered bill in the Verkhovna Rada that concerns ensuring a Ukrainian-language educational environment. It will not solve all issues, but it will create regulatory and legal grounds for requiring students and parents to use exclusively the Ukrainian language in the territory of educational institutions. This is a step that could also contribute to the solution or at least be a positive move in this direction,” notes Syrotenko.
He emphasizes that the Ministry of Education and Science should lead the fight against the return of schoolchildren to the Russian language. But first, the ministry needs to at least acknowledge that such a problem exists.
“I believe that the Ministry of Education and Science should deal with this issue much more seriously, systematically, and actively. The state should take the lead now and more actively help the Ukrainian society, because language is national security, especially given the current situation. Without the functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of public life, Ukraine is threatened with disappearance from the political map of the world as a country,” adds Syrotenko.
We also asked the Ministry of Education and Science for comments. They replied that they do not have an expert who is ready to talk about the Russian language in communication of Ukrainian schoolchildren.