Yes, this is indeed a catastrophe. But not the one Lukáš Machala is talking about. The real catastrophe is not that Slovak journalists say Kyjev or Charkov. The real catastrophe is that the Vice-Chair of the STVR Council is effectively questioning Ukraine’s very right to its own names, its own voice, and its own linguistic agency. At a meeting of the STVR Council, Machala called for editors to be punished for “language mistakes,” objected to the use of Kyjiv and Charkiv, and even promoted the abbreviation SŠA instead of USA; Slovak media separately noted that this abbreviation is unclear to most people and associated with Russian usage.

This is not a discussion about language norms. It is a political act. Because when an official publicly claims that he “does not know” which city is meant when Kyjiv is used, he is not defending the Slovak language. He is demonstratively denying Ukraine the right to name its cities in a sovereign way. In today’s world, this has long ceased to be a trivial matter: Associated Press switched to Kyiv back in 2019 precisely because Kiev was linked to a period of Russian and Soviet dominance, while the Ukrainian state has been systematically promoting correct forms of place names through the CorrectUA campaign.

But all this sounds particularly cynical in the Slovak context. Slovakia knows very well what it means to live under foreign domination over its space and its language. Encyclopaedia Britannica reminds us: from the 11th century, the territory of modern Slovakia was under Hungarian rule, and in the 19th century, Slovaks resisted policies of Magyarization. Bratislava itself was known for centuries as Pozsony in Hungarian and Pressburg in German, and for more than two hundred years served as the capital of Hungary.

That is precisely why Slovaks, more than many others, should understand: a city’s name is not a decorative detail, nor merely phonetics. It is a trace of power. It is a memory of who had the right to name, and who was forced to accept a foreign form as the “only correct” one. No one in modern Slovakia would seriously accept a lecture that Bratislava does not exist and that only Pozsony is real. Because then it would no longer be about linguistics, but about restoring a historical hierarchy in which one nation speaks from above and another must silently comply.

This is exactly how imperialism works in language. First, it imposes a foreign name. Then it declares it “traditional,” “convenient,” or “correct.” And then it begins to punish anyone who calls themselves by their own names. Russia has done this for decades and continues to do so today. In Crimea, after the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, Soviet authorities replaced the historical names of more than 1,300 settlements - over 90% of the peninsula’s toponyms at that time - erasing Crimean Tatar memory from the map and replacing it with standardized Soviet-Russian names. Since 1991, Ukraine has officially begun restoring historical Crimean Tatar names; however, this process is now effectively reversed by a wannabe empire that temporarily occupies it. The most cynical example is, of course, Russia naming 47 streets and squares after its soldiers who fought against Ukraine.

But of course, it’s not only Crimea - Russia is doing the same everywhere it can. In Melitopol, occupation authorities have systematically renamed streets, removing Ukrainian names and restoring Soviet-Russian markers under the false pretext of “historical justice.” In Mariupol, Russian forces changed street names, including Azovstalska, to displace Ukrainian memory, reinforce the myth of a “Russian Donbas,” and even facilitate the appropriation of local residents’ property.
That is why the use of Russified names of Ukrainian cities in 2026, especially from the position of a public institution, is not neutral conservatism. It is the legitimization of an imperial vocabulary. It is tolerance of the same logic by which Russia justifies occupation, Russification, and the erasure of identity. The Ruscism of the 21st century does not come only with a tank, a missile, or a torture chamber. Its philological form arrives with the phrase: “I don’t know which city you mean when you say Kyiv.”

The IESS considers Lukáš Machala’s statements to be a dangerous normalization and a deliberate promotion of imperial narratives in the Slovak public space. When a representative of the STVR Council effectively demands that journalists adhere to forms that, for millions of Ukrainians, are markers of Russian dominance, he is not defending the Slovak language. He is assisting a policy of erasure. The real defense of one’s language begins not with punishing for “Kyjiv”, but with refusing to serve a foreign empire.