Ukrainian medical university lecturer resigns over language law

A neurosurgeon teaching at Ivano-Frankovsk National Medical University in western Ukraine resigned after one of the students reported him for delivering lectures in Russian, the university has said on its website.

The incident comes as Kiev has embarked on a full-scale “Ukrainization” campaign after the government adopted new legislation allowing for more comprehensive Russian language bans throughout the country.

Earlier this month, Taras Kremen, who serves as the country’s commissioner for the protection of the state language, reportedly authorized an inspection on the use of the Ukrainian language at the medical university. According to him, a fifth-year student, Denis Dudko, complained about a teacher at the department of neurology and neurosurgery “who conducted classes in a non-state language.”

The lecturer, Vyacheslav Botev, had moved to Ivano-Frankovsk from Donetsk. Large numbers of Russian-speaking Ukrainians have fled to the west of the country amid the ongoing conflict with Russia.

After Dudko reported the incident on social media, the university administration launched an inquiry and found that Botev “used Russian words” during lectures, noting, however, that the administration had not received any complaints from the students. On the contrary, some of them lauded the “high professional level” of their instructor.

Botev, who had previously worked as a neurosurgeon in Algeria, Lebanon and the UK, reportedly warned the students that he would be giving lectures in Russian and asked them not to report him to the authorities. A large proportion of Ukrainian citizens can speak or understand both Russian and Ukrainian.

According to the university, the teacher “wrote an application for voluntary resignation from November 18, 2024, and did not provide a written explanation of the situation.”

The development comes as Ivano-Frankonsk introduced “language inspectors” last month to police and censor the increasing use of Russian.

The language dispute has been one of the most divisive issues in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and fueled the internal conflict that culminated in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.

In 2019, the national parliament passed a law requiring Ukrainian to be used exclusively in nearly all aspects of public life, including education, entertainment, politics, business and the service industry.

Last month, Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science backed a bill that would outlaw the use of Russian in the country’s schools, even during recess periods. However, a recent study conducted by a Ukrainian NGO revealed that despite the mandatory use of Ukrainian, 20% of preschoolers do not understand it at all and 40% of primary school students fail to master studies due to insufficient knowledge of the state language.