The war against the Ukrainian language. How is Russia preventing Ukrainians in occupied areas from receiving an education in their native language?

One of the schools in Kherson destroyed by Russian shelling, October 2024. Photo: Getty Images

Russia began mandatory Russification in 2014

In 2014, Russia occupied Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. A gradual Russification of these territories began immediately. While this process was rapid in Crimea, it slowed down somewhat in the territories of the so-called DPR and LPR due to the legal uncertainty surrounding these territories.

‘For example, in Horlivka, a city near Donetsk, a Russian puppet continued to use Ukrainian school textbooks “for several years” after 2014 before completely switching to the Russian curriculum,’ Human Rights Watch writes in its report.

After the full-scale invasion in 2022, the legal reasons for the transition disappeared. The Russian education system was introduced in the territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The first attempts of active assimilation of children in the occupied territories were trips of schoolchildren and students to summer camps throughout the Russian Federation for the purpose of re-education.

According to a report by the Yale School of Public Health, a total of 210 different re-education centres for Ukrainian children were identified. In 130 out of 210 (61.9%) locations, the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) special commission documented the process of re-education, which it defines as ‘the promotion of cultural, historical, social and patriotic messages or ideas that correspond to and serve the interests of the Russian federal government.’ In at least 39 out of 210 (18.6%) of the identified institutions, children from Ukraine were subjected to militarisation, i.e. ‘the psychological and physical training of children in the technologies, practices and culture of the Russian military’. These institutions are located in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.

Ukrainians cannot study in Ukrainian

Despite initial attempts at Russification through indoctrination of children into Russian culture, all such programmes were voluntary (parents could refuse) or targeted at orphans. Given that Russia is formally a federal state, the government supports the opportunity to study the native language of the national minorities of the Russian Federation, which, accordingly, includes Ukrainians in the occupied territories.

In 2023, RIA Novosti wrote that 46% of students in the Zaporizhzhia region had decided to study Ukrainian as their native language. They were to be provided with new Ukrainian language textbooks. However, the occupying administration did not like this situation, as one of the main goals of the war was to prove the false popularity of the Ukrainian language and culture in the territories of Ukraine. Otherwise, the Russian narrative about the alleged imposition of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine would be completely destroyed, along with the justification for starting the war.

After terrorising the local population, in 2025 the occupying authorities moved on to a new stage in their fight against Ukrainian language. From the 2025/2026 academic year, the study of Ukrainian as a ‘native’ language will be completely suspended in the occupied territories.

At first, the Russian Ministry of Education referred to a ‘change in the geopolitical situation’. This exact framing was used in an analytical note to the draft law on education in the new year. Later, realising how strange and vague the framing was, they went with a version saying that Ukrainian had stopped being a popular language to learn in two years. This is obviously untrue, given Russian statistics for 2023.

Thus, the Russian authorities have set a precedent that has never before occurred in the modern history of the Russian Federation by removing the language of its national minority from the educational programme. It is noted that, in theory, no one is prohibiting the study of Ukrainian as an elective subject. However, these elective classes will use special Ukrainian language textbooks printed in Russia, which are based on the spelling of the Ukrainian language in the late Soviet era.

This precedent gives the Russian authorities the freedom to assimilate national minorities throughout the Russian Federation. By abolishing the Ukrainian language and culture, the Russian authorities can take the same action against the Tatar, Chechen, Yakut and other languages and cultures.

In fact, we can already see the beginning of this process. For example, the Moscow authorities are trying to merge the only school in the city where Tatar is taught with a regular Russian school. By merging these two schools, it will be possible to abolish teaching in Tatar, again citing the unpopularity of this language among the families of pupils at the newly merged school. In this way, Russia is creating a system of education and culture that will gradually assimilate all the peoples within its borders.

In any case, Russia can only stop the process of ethnocide of the Ukrainian people in the occupied Ukrainian territories in the event of a radical change in the political regime in the Russian Federation, which is unlikely. Therefore, the return of the occupied territories is a matter of survival for 3 million speakers of the Ukrainian language and culture.

The analytical article was prepared by Dmytro Olkhovychenko, an intern at the think tank Resurgam.