‘The war leaked into every lesson’: learning Ukrainian in a country under siege | Ukraine | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/04/war-lesson-learning-ukrainian-culture-ukraine
The war leaked into every lesson’: learning Ukrainian in a country under siege
An illustration showing figures wandering in and out of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Illustration: Nataliia Shulga/The Guardian
Soon after my first visit to Ukraine four years ago, I began language lessons. It taught me more than I ever expected
Charlotte Higgins
Tue 4 Aug 2026 06.00 CEST
Almost as soon as I returned from my first reporting trip to Ukraine, in October 2022, I decided to start Ukrainian lessons. Not as an act of solidarity, exactly, but as a marker that I was committed to returning. I wanted to know some Ukrainian in order to feel less helpless, to edge towards a better understanding of what I was reporting, and to be more courteous to those whom I encountered. And I hoped, in time, to be able to pull myself through a piece of poetry in the original.