Ukraine Culture & Language

Ukrainian culture spent centuries being described as a regional variant of someone else’s and has spent the last decade demonstrating otherwise, often to an international audience for the first time.

Shevchenko

Taras Shevchenko was born a serf, bought his freedom, and wrote the poetry that made the modern Ukrainian literary language and the modern national idea. He was exiled and forbidden to write or paint for it. His portrait hangs in Ukrainian homes the way few writers’ do anywhere, and every town has a street named for him.

Textile and egg

Vyshyvanka embroidery carries village-specific patterns and is worn now as an everyday statement rather than a costume. Pysanky — wax-resist decorated eggs — use motifs that predate Christianity in the region, and the technique is genuinely intricate.

Music

The bandura, a plucked instrument with dozens of strings, carried the Cossack epic songs; its players were largely killed under Stalin, and the instrument’s revival is itself a political statement. Ukrainian polyphonic folk singing has had a strong influence on contemporary music, and the country’s Eurovision wins have been treated as national events.

The table

Borscht — the Ukrainian cooking of it was inscribed by UNESCO in 2022 as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding — along with varenyky dumplings, salo, holubtsi and dark rye bread.

Wartime culture

Theatres, museums and publishers have kept working through the invasion, often underground and literally so. Contemporary Ukrainian writing, photography and music have reached international audiences at a scale they never previously had.

Ukrainian is the sole official language, an East Slavic language written in Cyrillic. It is distinct from Russian — roughly as close as Spanish is to Portuguese — and the two are not mutually intelligible in the way outsiders sometimes assume.

Russian was widely spoken, particularly in the east and south and in the cities, and a great many Ukrainians who grew up with it have consciously switched to Ukrainian since 2014 and especially since 2022. Speaking Russian to someone here is not neutral; use English, which is far better received.

English is spoken by younger people and in the cities, less so elsewhere. Learning to read Cyrillic pays for itself quickly on signs and menus.

A few words matter: dobryi den for good day, dyakuyu for thank you, bud laska for please, and Slava Ukraini, to which the answer is Heroiam slava — a greeting and a response you will hear constantly.