Odesa regional council member asks for moratorium on Russian songs in public space

Yaroslava Vitko-Prysyazhnyuk, a member of the Odesa Regional Council, appealed to the heads of the Odesa city and regional military administrations, Serhiy Lysak and Oleh Kiper, to impose a moratorium on the performance of Russian music in public spaces.

She posted this on her Facebook page, recalling the incident at the Palladium nightclub where Russian songs were played during a party and the police even visited the club.

"Unfortunately, such incidents are not uncommon, for example, in March, when after an action in support of the families of missing soldiers, participants were outraged by dancing to Russian songs on Deribasovskaya Street, which took place almost in unison with this event. A fight on one of Odesa's beaches in the summer, which, according to eyewitnesses, was caused by Russian music that was being played loudly by vacationers," the MP said.

The MP also noted that the introduction of a moratorium on the public use of Russian-language cultural products is already a common practice in Ukraine at the level of local communities. For example, the Zhytomyr Regional Council adopted a decision on similar restrictions back in 2018. In 2022, the moratorium was also introduced in Konotop (Sumy region) and Ivano-Frankivsk, and in 2023 - in Kyiv, Cherkasy, and Zaporizhzhia.

It should be noted that the incident at the Palladium was responded to by the head of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, Oleh Kiper, who stated that the OMA is categorically against Russian music in clubs or other public places and instructed the relevant departments of the administration to investigate the situation and provide a legal assessment of the venue's actions. The organizers must explain how this was possible in a city that is officially recognized as a war zone.

Meanwhile, the secretariat of the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language registered 2,227 complaints from citizens about violations of the Law of Ukraine "On the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language" in the first three quarters of 2025. Most complaints about violations of language legislation came from Kyiv - 870 appeals (39% of the total), Odesa - 339 (15%), Kharkiv - 286 (13%), and Dnipro - 201 (9%) regions.

Кирило Бойко