On February 21, Ukraine joins the world in observing International Mother Language Day—a day dedicated to protecting linguistic diversity and the rights of national communities. The Ukrainian state guarantees the support, preservation, and development of the national, cultural, linguistic, and religious identity of Ukraine’s Indigenous peoples and national communities.
However, in temporarily occupied Crimea, this day carries particular significance, as the Russian occupation administration systematically suppresses the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar languages, while any resistance to its assimilation policies is brutally repressed. Since the occupation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has intensified efforts to erase the linguistic and national identity of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, violating their fundamental rights.
The discriminatory policies of the occupation administration, aimed at eliminating Ukrainian-language education and marginalizing the Crimean Tatar language, were documented in the ruling of the International Court of Justice on January 31, 2024. The decision confirms the destruction of Ukrainian-language educational opportunities, the forced imposition of the Russian language, and the spread of propagandist narratives. While in the 2013–2014 academic year, 7.2% of students in Crimea received their education in Ukrainian, by 2022–2023, this figure had plummeted to a catastrophic 0.1%. At the same time, even education in the Crimean Tatar language remains under threat. Over the past decade, the percentage of students with access to native-language instruction has increased by only 0.05%, indicating a purely declarative rather than substantive support for Crimean Tatar education by the occupation administrations.
According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, as of 2025, there are no longer any schools in occupied Crimea where instruction is conducted in Ukrainian. Most Ukrainian-language classes have been eliminated by Russian occupiers, and enrollment in the few remaining classes is deliberately obstructed by school administrations.
According to UNESCO’s classification, the Crimean Tatar language falls under the category of severely endangered languages. However, experts from the A. Yu. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine warn that recent negative trends have significantly worsened the situation, pushing the language toward the critically endangered category.
The Russian Federation not only eradicates opportunities for education in Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar but also punishes their use in public spaces. According to a Human Rights Watch report dated June 20, 2024, the Ukrainian language is being systematically eradicated from the occupied territories. There are documented cases where students have been punished for speaking Ukrainian, and teachers have been dismissed for using Ukrainian educational materials. The occupation administration coerces parents into enrolling their children in Russian-language schools, threatening them with fines, deprivation of parental rights, or even arrest.
Russia’s policy of linguicide is aimed at systematically eradicating Ukrainian civic identity. For decades, Moscow has used language as a tool of control and assimilation, and after the occupation of Crimea in 2014, this process only intensified.
Ukraine remains steadfast in protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples and national communities, recognizing the preservation of linguistic identity—particularly that of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars—as an essential part of restoring justice. The state is making every effort to safeguard and promote the Crimean Tatar language, expand access to Ukrainian education, and support those who, despite repression, continue to speak, teach, and pass on their native language to future generations.