🇷🇺 → 🇺🇦

How easy is Ukrainian for Russian speakers?

Going from Russian to Ukrainian (Українська) has a composite linguistic distance of 19% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

19% distance FSI Cat III — ~1,100 hours

Lexical similarity

62%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance

98%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity

50%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match

100%

Cyrillic → Cyrillic

Genealogical kinship

100%

Indo-European ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇷🇺 Russian

Весной природа просыпается и всё становится зелёным и красивым.

🇺🇦 Ukrainian

Навесні природа прокидається і все стає зеленим і красивим.

🇷🇺 Russian

Семья живёт в большом доме рядом с рекой и лесом.

🇺🇦 Ukrainian

Сім'я живе у великому будинку поруч з річкою та лісом.

Curated cognates between Russian and Ukrainian

Word pairs that share a common etymological root — instantly recognisable across both languages:

water

вода (voda) ↔ вода (voda)
house

дом (dom) ↔ дім (dim)
father

отец (otets) ↔ батько (batko)
brother

брат (brat) ↔ брат (brat)

Other easy languages for Russian speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Russian:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between Russian and Ukrainian. No signup.