What did Ukraine's language rule mean for service in January 2021?
A look back at the service-language provision that took effect in Ukraine on 16 January 2021, days after a presidential visit from Moldova.
What changed in Ukrainian shops, offices and other places of service around 18 January 2021? Two days earlier, on 16 January, a provision of the Law on the Language took effect requiring that citizens be served in Ukrainian.
The rule turned a general legal principle into an everyday expectation. It applied to the ordinary encounter between a customer and a provider, rather than to official documents or public ceremonies. On 18 January 2021, the first working day after the provision came into force, that expectation began to apply across the country.
The days before it were also marked by diplomacy. On 12 January, Moldovan President Maia Sandu arrived in Ukraine on her first foreign visit as president. Both countries said they were willing to join the Three Seas Initiative and the European Union.
Taken together, the two items show a country handling questions of identity and of international orientation at the same time: one concerning how citizens are addressed at home, the other concerning the partnerships Kyiv and Chisinau said they wanted to pursue.
