Zelenskyy signed a law on abolishing the protection of the Russian language in Ukraine. What does it mean?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed Law No. 4699-IX, which officially excludes the Russian language from the list of languages subject to protection in the country in accordance with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The Verkhovna Rada voted for this document back in December 2025, and seven months later it came into force, writes the BBC.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty Images
“The Russian language is excluded from the list of languages to which Ukraine applies the provisions of the Charter. This is a fair and logical decision. The language of the aggressor state cannot use the protection tools created to support the languages of indigenous peoples and national communities,” said the Speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk.
The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted for the bill back in December 2025. Zelenskyy signed the document only seven months later, and now it comes into force.
From now on, the provisions of the Charter concerning regional or minority languages in Ukraine will not apply to the Russian language.
Which languages remained under protection?
The updated version of the law has retained state protection and support for a number of languages. This list includes Belarusian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, German, Greek (Modern Greek and Rumeika), Hebrew, Yiddish, Crimean Tatar, Polish, Romani, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Czech, languages of the indigenous peoples of Ukraine — Karaim and Krymchak, "so that no community is left without attention."
The developers of the law note that the exclusion of the Russian language does not violate Ukraine's international obligations. According to the explanatory note, due to its centuries-old dominance, the Russian language remains the most used among the country's national minorities, and there is no reason to believe that it is threatened with extinction.
What will change in practice?
As explained by MP Yevhenia Kravchuk, the European Charter was originally created to protect small languages threatened with complete extinction.
For ordinary citizens, nothing will change in everyday life — people who are comfortable speaking Russian will continue to do so.
The main changes concern state funding. Ukraine no longer undertakes obligations to support Russian cultural centers. The state will not finance the publication of books in Russian or its mandatory study.
The Russian language loses its status as an object of protection within the Charter and the corresponding budgetary support.
Statistics: how Ukrainians are abandoning the Russian language
Changes in legislation reflect the real state of affairs in society. A survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), conducted in early 2025, recorded a rapid increase in the popularity of the Ukrainian language.
If in 2020, 52% of respondents spoke Ukrainian at home, by early 2025 this figure had grown to 63%.
The share of those who exclusively use Russian, on the contrary, almost halved — from 25% to 13%.
Another 19% of respondents use both languages equally.
The attitude towards learning Russian in schools has also fundamentally changed. Now 58% of Ukrainians are convinced that it should not be taught to children at all (in 2019, only 8% held this view).
Another 29% believe that Russian can only be studied as a regular foreign language or even to a lesser extent.
Only 3% of citizens now advocate for dedicating as much time to the Russian language as to the state Ukrainian language.
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