Russian is the most common first language in the Donbas and Crimea regions of Ukraine and the cities of Kharkiv and Odesa, and a main language in large cities in the eastern and southern portions of the country. The usage and status of the language is the subject of political disputes. Ukrainian is the country's sole state language since the adoption of the 1996 Constitution, which prohibits an official bilingual system at state level but also guarantees the free development, use and protection of Russian and other languages of national minorities. In 2017 a new Law on Education was passed which restricted the use of Russian as a language of instruction. Almost a decade later in 2026, Ukraine has removed Russian from the list of languages to which the provisions of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages apply.
History of the Russian language in Ukraine
The East Slavic languages originated in the language spoken in Rus in the medieval period. Significant differences in spoken language in different regions began after the division of the Rus lands between the Golden Horde (from about 1240) and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Lithuanian state eventually allied with the Kingdom of Poland in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth of 1569–1795. Russians under the Golden Horde developed what became the modern Russian language; people in the northern Lithuanian sector developed Belarusian, and in the southern Polish sector Ukrainian.
The ethnonym "Ukrainian" for the south-eastern Slavic people did not become well-established until the 19th century, although English-speakers (for example) called those peoples' land "Ukraine" in English from before the 18th century (the Oxford English Dictionary traces the word "Ukrainian" in English back as far as 1804, and records its application to the Ukrainian language from 1886). The western part of the country, Austrian Galicia, Bukovina, and Carpathian Ruthenia, was generally known in German, French and English as "Ruthenia", and the people as "Ruthenians." The Russian imperial centre, however, preferred the names "Little" and "White" Russias for the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands respectively, as distinct from Great Russia.
No definitive geographical border separated people speaking Russian and those speaking Ukrainian – rather gradual shifts in vocabulary and pronunciation marked the areas between the historical cores of the languages.
Although Goriuns resided in the Putyvl region (in present-day northern Ukraine) in the times of Grand Duchy of Lithuania or perhaps even earlier,F.D. Klimchuk, About ethnolinguistic history of Left Bank of Dnieper (in connection to the ethnogenesis of Goriuns). Published in "Goriuns: history, language, culture", Proceedings of International Scientific Conference, (Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, February 13, 2004) the Russian language mostly came through the migration of ethnic Russians to Ukraine and through the adoption of the Russian language by Ukrainians during the Russification of Ukraine.
Russian settlers The first new waves of Russian settlers onto what is now Ukrainian territory came in the late-16th century to the empty lands of Slobozhanshchyna (in the region of Kharkiv) that Russia had gained from the Tatars, or from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania - although Ukrainian peasants from the Polish-Lithuanian west escaping harsh exploitative conditions outnumbered them.
More Russian speakers appeared in the northern, central and eastern territories of modern Ukraine during the late-17th century, following the Cossack Rebellion (1648–1657) which Bohdan Khmelnytsky led against Poland. The Khmelnytsky Uprising led to a massive movement of Ukrainian settlers to the Slobozhanshchyna region, which converted it from a sparsely inhabited frontier area to one of the major populated regions of the Tsardom of Russia. Following the Pereyaslav Rada of 1654 the northern and eastern parts of present-day Ukraine came under the hegemony of the Russian Tsardom. This brought the first significant, but still small, wave of Russian settlers into central Ukraine (primarily several thousand soldiers stationed in garrisons, out of a population of approximately 1.2 million non-Russians). Although the number of Russian settlers in Ukraine prior to the 18th century remained small, the local upper-classes within the part of Ukraine acquired by Russia came to use the Russian language widely.
Beginning in the late 18th century, large numbers of Russians (as well as of Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks and of other Christians and Jews) settled in newly acquired lands in what is now southern Ukraine, a region then known as Novorossiya ("New Russia"). These lands – previously known as the Wild Fields – had been sparsely populated prior to the 18th century due to the threat of Crimean-Tatar raids, but once Saint Petersburg had eliminated the Tatar state as a threat, Russian nobles were granted large tracts of fertile land for working by newly arrived peasants, most of them ethnic Ukrainians but many of them Russians.
Settlement in the 19th century
The 19th century saw a dramatic increase in the urban Russian population in present-day Ukraine, as ethnic Russian settlers moved into and populated the newly industrialised and growing towns. At the beginning of the 20th century the Russians formed the largest ethnic group in almost all large cities within Ukraine's modern borders, including Kyiv (54.2%), Kharkiv (63.1%), Odesa (49.09%), Mykolaiv (66.33%), Mariupol (63.22%), Luhansk, (68.16%), Kherson (47.21%), Melitopol (42.8%), Ekaterinoslav, (41.78%), Kropyvnytskyi (34.64%), Simferopol (45.64%), Yalta (66.17%), Kerch (57.8%), Sevastopol (63.46%).Дністрянський М.С. Етнополітична географія України. Лівів Літопис, видавництво ЛНУ імені Івана Франка, 2006, page 342 The Ukrainian migrants who settled in these cities entered a Russian-speaking milieu (particularly with Russian-speaking administration) and needed to adopt the Russian language.
Suppression and fostering of the Ukrainian language
The Russian Empire promoted the spread of the Russian language among the native Ukrainian population, actively refusing to acknowledge the existence of a Ukrainian language.
Alarmed by the threat of Ukrainian separatism (in its turn influenced by the 1863 demands of Polish nationalists), the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Pyotr Valuev in 1863 issued a secret decree that banned the publication of religious texts and educational texts written in the Ukrainian language as non-grammatical, but allowed all other texts, including fiction. The Emperor Alexander II in 1876 expanded this ban by issuing the Ems Ukaz (which lapsed in 1905). The Ukaz banned all Ukrainian-language books and song-lyrics, as well as the importation of such works. Furthermore, Ukrainian-language public performances, plays, and lectures were forbidden. In 1881 the decree was amended by Alexander III to allow the publishing of lyrics and dictionaries, and the performances of some plays in the Ukrainian language with local officials' approval.: "Tsar Alexander III softened the proclamation somewhat in 1881, authorizing limited use of Ukrainian in theaters with special permission, and allowing the printing of Ukrainian dictionaries, provided that they used Russian Cyrillic." Ukrainian-only troupes were, however, forbidden. Approximately 9% of the population spoke Russian at the time of the Russian Empire Census of 1897, as opposed to 44.31% of the total population of the Empire.
In 1918 the Soviet Council of People's Commissars decreed that nationalities under their control had the right to education in their own language. Thus Ukrainians in the Soviet era were entitled to study and learn in the Ukrainian language. During the Soviet times, the attitude to Ukrainian language and culture went through periods of promotion (policy of "korenization", to ), suppression (during the subsequent period of Stalinism), and renewed Ukrainization (notably in the epoch of Khrushchev, to 1964). Ukrainian cultural organizations, such as theatres or the Writers' Union, were funded by the central administration.
The issue of the Russification of Ukraine and linguistic discrimination of Ukrainian speakers during the Soviet era was studied by the Ukrainian Soviet dissident Ivan Dziuba in his work "Internationalism or Russification?". While officially there was no state language in the Soviet Union until 1990, Russian in practice had an implicitly privileged position as the only language widely spoken across the country. In 1990 Russian became legally the official all-Union language of the Soviet Union, with constituent republics having rights to declare their own official languages. The Ukrainian language, despite official encouragement and government funding, like other regional languages, was often frowned upon or quietly discouraged, which led to a gradual decline in its usage.: "Although the use of Ukrainian was permitted in Austrian Ukraine, it was largely prohibited both in Transcarpathia, and in Russian Ukraine[...] [I]ts use in any official capacity was forbidden. [...] Since Ukrainian was prohibited in education and in all official capacities, [...] the educated classes spoke Russian[...] Shevelov reports that even peasants were ashamed of speaking Ukrainian and used as much Russian as possible."
Ukrainization in modern Ukraine
Since the Euromaidan of 2013–2014, the Ukrainian government has issued several laws aimed at encouraging Ukrainization in the media, in education and in other spheres.
In February 2017, the Ukrainian government banned the commercial importation of books from Russia, which had accounted for up to 60% of all titles sold in Ukraine.
On May 23, 2017, the Ukrainian parliament approved the law that most broadcast content should be in Ukrainian (75% of national carriers and 50% of local carriers).
The 2017 law on education provides that Ukrainian language is the language of education at all levels except for one or more subjects that are allowed to be taught in two or more languages, namely English or one of the other official languages of the European Union (i.e. excluding Russian).Про освіту | від 05.09.2017 № 2145-VIII (Сторінка 1 з 7) The law does state that persons belonging to the indigenous peoples of Ukraine are guaranteed the right to study at public pre-school institutes and primary schools in "the language of instruction of the respective indigenous people, along with the state language of instruction" in separate classes or groups. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has expressed concern with this measure and with the lack of "real consultation" with the representatives of national minorities. In July 2018, The Mykolaiv Okrug Administrative Court liquidated the status of Russian as a regional language, on the suit (bringing to the norms of the national legislation due to the recognition of the law "On the Principles of State Language Policy" by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine as unconstitutional) of the First Deputy Prosecutor of the Mykolaiv Oblast. In October and December 2018, parliaments of the city of Kherson and of Kharkiv Oblast also abolished the status of the Russian language as a regional one. In the Kharkiv region abolished the regional status of the Russian language - a deputy , Ukrayinska Pravda (13 December 2018).
The 2019 language law made Ukrainian mandatory in a number of spheres of public life.