“Nations do not die of heart attacks. At first, they take away their language…”
— Lina Kostenko

In the current situation, the language issue is more relevant than ever. The percentage of those people who have switched or are trying to switch to Ukrainian is calculated almost on a daily basis.

It is very nice to watch Ukrainian bloggers who used to speak russian and now run their social networks in Ukrainian.

In Kyiv kiosks, only 197 of the presented print media were in the state language, which is 11% of the total. This is stated in the report “On the state of compliance with the Language Law of Ukraine. On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language in 2021,” signed by Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremen. And it is very sad, I hope that later the situation will improve. I believe that Ukrainian-language literature will predominate on our shelves too. After all, in 2021 most of the Ukrainian-language knowledge was presented in the form of textbooks for schoolchildren, preschoolers, various coloring books and so on. The rest of the presented units (1,643) were published in russian, which was 89% of the total.

The situation with the popularization of the Ukrainian language in publications may improve. After all, on January 16, 2022, Article 25 of the Law of Ukraine “On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language” came into force for national and regional print media. It stipulates that the print media production in Ukraine is to be published in the state language. In addition, from July 16, 2024, this rule will come into force for the print media of the local sphere of distribution. Let’s hope that with the passing time, in the nearest future, in Ukrainian multimedia the russian language will become a rarity, as well as books in russian. As it was said by Ivan Ogienko, “Language is the heart of the people: language perishes – the people perish.”