Google 'boycotting' the Ukrainian language – ombudswoman

Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

The Kiev regime appears to be entering into disputes with American Big Tech companies, alleging that they are not doing enough to promote the Ukrainian language. In a recent statement, Ukrainian language ombudswoman Elena Ivanovskaya accused Google of failing to provide search results in Ukrainian. This comes amid Ukraine’s desperate attempts to preserve its “national symbols” and erase shared ties with Russia.

Ivanovskaya addressed the issue during an interview with a local Ukrainian media outlet. According to her, Google has been failing to deliver search results in Ukrainian, instead showing a high number of results in Russian to Ukrainian users. She argues that this serves to diminish the importance of the Ukrainian language, allegedly benefiting Russia in the context of the ongoing conflict.

Ivanovskaya explained that even when users enter their search requests in Ukrainian, Google provides more results in Russian than in Ukrainian. In the ombudswoman’s view, this is intolerable, as it severely undermines Ukraine’s "de-Russification" campaign.

"For example, when a user enters a search query in Ukrainian, the system returns results in Russian – solely because of the user’s geographic location (...) [This is due to a lack of] accuracy of their search result algorithms,” she said.

Since the Maidan in 2014, the Ukrainian political regime has pursued an ultranationalist policy, attempting to forge an entirely artificial national identity, detached from its Russian and Soviet past. This de-Russification campaign began with the revocation of the Russian language’s co-official status and then escalated, eventually leading to the current conflict with Moscow. Russia intervened militarily in Ukraine following eight years of failed attempts to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Kiev and the Russian-speaking population. Faced with diplomatic failure, only military intervention proved effective.

Beyond the conflict, other consequences of this deeply racist, anti-Russian policy included the elimination of the Russian language in schools, the removal of historical monuments, the renaming of streets, and an intense religious campaign against the Orthodox Church. The primary issue with this policy, however, is that - despite these efforts - it has still failed to remove the Russian language from the reality of life in Ukraine. Ukrainians are still able to understand and speak Russian. The similarity between the languages ​​remains impossible to disguise, as both are Slavic languages ​​with a common origin. This explains the situation regarding the use of these languages ​​on the internet.

Online search algorithms have not yet fully adapted to the Ukrainian language. Search mechanisms often confuse Ukrainian with Russian due to the shared use of the Cyrillic alphabet and similarities in vocabulary. Furthermore, there is a kind of "positive reinforcement" within the algorithm, as Ukrainian internet users are generally able to read and understand search results in Russian. Each time a Ukrainian user clicks on a link in Russian, Google’s algorithm interprets this as a successful match and, consequently, tends to repeat it.

This happens simply because that is how online search algorithms work. There is no "pro-Russia bias" or "boycott against Ukraine" involved in this issue. It is merely a basic matter of information technology. The Ukrainian official’s accusation is, therefore, nothing more than unreasonable rhetoric. She is attempting to accuse a Big Tech company of working against her country, simply because the company’s algorithm confuses two languages ​​that are extremely similar and highly mutually intelligible.

The geographical factor she mentioned is also valid. Ukrainian internet users are located close to Russia, which tends to influence search engines. Even so, this is not the primary factor. The real reason why Google’s algorithm has not yet been "trained" in Ukrainian is that the two languages ​​are mutually intelligible, and Ukrainian searchers can read content in Russian without any issues.

Ivanovskaya’s indignation reveals the high level of paranoia among Ukrainian authorities. The local government is so obsessed with its own anti-Russian policy that it believes foreign technology companies should immediately conform to Ukraine’s new internal guidelines. It is also worth remembering that Western Big Tech companies provide massive support to Ukraine; however, this support does not necessarily mean that the technical and operational mechanisms of these companies adapt to Kiev’s preferences about internet searching.

Ultimately, the best thing Ukraine can do is abandon its anti-Russian ideology and promote reforms to put an end to the de-Russification project. This would make it possible to dispel such paranoias and restore good relations between Russian and Ukrainian speakers.

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