Language policy in Ukraine

The language policy in Ukraine is based on its Constitution, international treaties and on domestic legislation. According to article 10 of the Constitution, Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, and the state shall ensure the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout the entire territory of the country. Some minority languages (such as Russian and Belarusian) have significantly less protection, and have restrictions on their public usage.

The 2012 law On the principles of the State language policy [uk; ru] granted regional language status to Russian and other minority languages. It allowed the use of minority languages in courts, schools and other government institutions in areas of Ukraine where the national minorities exceed 10% of the population. The 2012 law was supported by the governing Party of Regions and opposed by the opposition parties, who argued that the law undermined the role of the Ukrainian language, violated Article 10 of the Constitution, and was adopted with an irregular procedure. Immediately after the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, on 23 February 2014, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to repeal the law. This decision was vetoed by the acting President Turchynov. In October 2014, the Constitutional Court started reviewing the constitutionality of the 2012 law and declared it unconstitutional on 28 February 2018.

In April 2019, the Ukrainian parliament voted a new law, the law "On supporting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the State language". The law made the use of Ukrainian compulsory (totally or within quotas) in more than 30 spheres of public life, including public administration, electoral process, education, science, culture, media, economic and social life, health and care institutions, and activities of political parties. The law did not regulate private communication. Some exemptions were provided for the official languages of the European Union and for minority languages, with the exclusion of Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish. The Venice Commission and Human Rights Watch expressed concern about the 2019 law's failure to protect the language rights of Ukrainian minorities. On 8 December 2023, the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill that claimed to have fixed this issues and was adopted in order to meet one of the European Commission’s criteria for the opening of Ukrainian European Union membership negotiations.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 19 June 2022 the Ukrainian parliament passed two laws which placed restrictions on Russian books and music. The new laws ban Russian citizens from printing books unless they take Ukrainian citizenship, prohibit the import of books printed in Russia, Belarus and the occupied Ukrainian territories, and prohibit the reproduction in the media and public transport of music performed or created by post-1991 Russian citizens, unless the musicians are included in a "white list" of artists who have publicly condemned Russian aggression against Ukraine.

In June 2023, a bill for a new law (No. 9432) on the use of English [ru] as one of Ukraine's languages for international communication was introduced by president Zelenskyy. Among other things, the bill encourages use of Ukrainian subtitles rather than dubbing for imported English-language movies.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine, the Russian language has dwindled. In 2001 it remained one of the two most used languages for business, legal proceedings, science, artistry, and many other spheres of everyday life. According to the 2001 census, 67.5% of the citizens of Ukraine regarded Ukrainian as their native language, with Russian being considered the native language for another 29.6%. Various other languages constituted the remaining 2.9%.

During the Soviet era, the status of Ukrainian was legally codified in 1922, when Ukrainian and Russian were declared to be of "national significance" and schools were allowed to use them both in teaching; they were never adopted as official languages of Soviet Ukraine but had formally equal status as "generally used languages". In practice, however, Ukrainian was mainly a rural language and had lower prestige than Russian, which was the language of the educated urban society. After an initial phase of official commitment to Ukrainization in the 1920s and early 1930s under the Korenizatsiia policy, the Soviet era was marked by an increasing trend toward Russification. In 1938 the study of Russian was made obligatory and in 1958 the study of the mother-tongue was made optional. From 1959 to 1989, on average 60-70% of the population spoke Ukrainian and 20% spoke Russian; Yiddish was also widely spoken by the decreasing Jewish population (from 14% in 1959 to 3.9% in 1989).

On 28 October 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR adopted the "Law of Languages". The Ukrainian language was declared the only official language, while the other languages spoken in Ukraine were guaranteed constitutional protection. The government was obliged to create the conditions required for the development and use of Ukrainian language as well as languages of other ethnic groups, including Russian. Usage of other languages, along with Ukrainian, was allowed in local institutions located in places of residence of the majority of citizens of the corresponding ethnicities.^{[clarification needed]} Citizens were guaranteed the right to use their native or any other languages and were entitled to address various institutions and organisations in Ukrainian, in Russian, or in another language of their work, or in a language acceptable to the parties.