Stas Olenchenko was born in Kyiv, independent Ukraine. While growing up he heard both Russian and Ukrainian, and a mixture of the two, Surzhyk, but in his family and with his friends he mostly spoke Russian.

He always knew that his great-grandparents were Ukrainian-speaking farmers, and later his grandparents and parents switched to Russian because of the russification of the Soviet era.

After the Orange Revolution, Euromaidan, outbreak of the war in Donbas and occupation of Crimea by Russia, Stas's family began to discuss the bilingualism caused by their country's history. In February 2022, when Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, they decided to switch to Ukrainian completely.

This is a sensitive and very personal account of what it means to have two native languages, what it is like to realise that your language is associated with the aggressor of the war, and how switching changes your emotional relationship with the language that your ancestors once lost.

Produced by Vaida Pilibaitytė

Editor Sigita Vegytė

Cover photo by Ivan Studynskyi