‘I’ve been speaking Russian my whole life – we understand each other in the trenches’: Ukrainian soldiers believe that language doesn’t matter on the front line – survey

Language doesn’t matter on the front line.

This is the conclusion reached by Ukrainian soldiers – participants of a street survey conducted in Odessa.

All the surveyed soldiers stated that it doesn’t matter to them whether people speak to them in Russian or Ukrainian.

“How do you feel about Russian-speaking Ukrainians?” asked the correspondent to the soldiers.

“I have nothing against them”; “I’m the same, I’ve been speaking Russian all my life. In the trenches, we understand each other without extra words – whether someone is from Lviv, Western Ukraine or Donbas”; “Our Constitution doesn’t prohibit speaking Russian. It’s everyone’s right”; “I sometimes speak Russian, sometimes Ukrainian,” replied the men in military uniform.

They assured that language doesn’t matter on the front line.

The only exception was a civilian-dressed respondent (according to him – a soldier from Rivne), who believes that everyone in Ukraine should have switched to Ukrainian back in 2014.