This is a question I get asked regularly — and I understand why it occupies your mind. You are a single or separated man from the United States, Canada, the UK, or elsewhere in the English-speaking world, and you have made the brave decision to seek happiness with a Ukrainian or Russian woman. Good for you. But now a nagging question arises: which language should you learn? Russian? Ukrainian? Both?

Let's be honest — you cannot truly understand a country's culture without speaking its language. Could anyone claim to understand France without speaking French? That would be absurd. The same logic applies here. If you genuinely want to understand your future wife — not just charm her, but understand her on a deep level — language is your gateway.

And I am not speaking from an ivory tower. I am Antoine Monnier, founder of CQMI Matchmaking Agency, married to Boryslava, a Ukrainian woman from the Carpathian Mountains. I am fully fluent in Russian. I spent more than 20 years learning, perfecting, and living the Russian language. I will give you my answer — but first, let me lay out the facts so you can judge for yourselves.

The political context: when language becomes a battlefield

Since the Russian aggression of 2022, Ukraine has undertaken to restrict — and in some cases ban — the use of the Russian language on its territory. Russian-language schools are progressively switching to Ukrainian as the language of instruction. This is a political fact that I respect and whose emotional motivations I understand in a country at war.

That said, as I wrote yesterday in an article that generated quite a reaction, the Russian language does not belong to Putin. Boycotting the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky will not change the course of the war. The Russian language is a universal heritage of humanity — and I stand by this position, as someone who is a fervent supporter of Ukraine, married to a Ukrainian woman, and who has been defending this country for years.

Now, let us look at the situation objectively to answer the initial question — even though you have probably already guessed what my answer will be.

A brief history of the Ukrainian language

The Ukrainian language belongs to the family of East Slavic languages, alongside Russian and Belarusian. Its origins trace back to Old East Slavic, the common language spoken by the peoples of Kievan Rus' between the 9th and 13th centuries. It was during this period that distinctive features of Ukrainian began appearing in written documents.

The history of Ukrainian is one of a language that survived centuries of foreign domination. Under Polish-Lithuanian rule from the 14th to the 17th century, the language absorbed Polish influences while preserving its identity. The Cossack era — the period of the Zaporozhian Hetmanate — marked a cultural and linguistic renaissance. It was the national poet Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) who, in the 19th century, truly established modern literary Ukrainian and gave it its letters of nobility.

But Ukrainian was systematically suppressed by the Russian Empire — the infamous Valuev Circular of 1863 went so far as to declare that "a distinct Ukrainian language never existed, does not exist, and shall never exist." Under the USSR, Russification continued, particularly in the east and south of the country. Since independence in 1991, and especially since 2014, Ukraine has pursued an active policy of promoting its national language — a movement that accelerated considerably after 2022.

And the history of the Russian language?

Russian also descends from Old East Slavic. It was from the Muscovite dialect, between the 15th and 17th centuries, that the Russian national language gradually formed. Swiss linguist Patrick Sériot compares the difference between Ukrainian and Russian to that between Spanish and Italian: two closely related yet distinct languages sharing a common origin.

The great historical difference is that Russian benefited from the power of an empire. First the Grand Duchy of Moscow, then the Russian Empire which stretched from Europe to Central Asia and the Pacific, and finally the Soviet Union. This expansion made Russian a vehicular language across an immense geographical space. In the 19th century, Russian experienced its literary golden age with Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov — authors who definitively placed Russian among the greatest languages of civilization.

After World War II, Russian became the compulsory language throughout the Soviet bloc and its satellites. Even after the fall of the USSR in 1991, the language retained considerable influence across all the countries of the former union.

The decisive criterion: how many people speak each language?

In my most objective assessment, this is the most important criterion to consider. And the numbers speak for themselves:

Look at these numbers carefully. I spent more than 20 years learning Russian, and I want my time investment to pay off. If you spend 20 years of your life learning Ukrainian, you will be able to communicate with roughly 40 to 45 million people, concentrated essentially in a single country. If you spend the same time learning Russian, you gain access to a pool of 258 to 280 million speakers, spread across 17 countries, from Europe to Central Asia.

I remember a telling anecdote. During a trip to Kazakhstan, I was able to converse freely with locals — in Russian. In Riga, Latvia, same thing. In Tbilisi, Georgia, same again. This investment in Russian has opened doors across a vast space that Ukrainian, as beautiful as the language is, could never have offered me.

A crucial point for your reflection

Take note of what follows, because it is fundamental: virtually all Ukrainian women understand and speak the Russian language.

If you are a Russian speaker traveling in Ukraine, you will be able to make yourself understood practically everywhere — with the exception of some remote areas in the Carpathian Mountains, in the far west of the country. This is a fact that even the most passionate defenders of the Ukrainian language do not dispute.

My own wife Boryslava, originally from the Carpathians — one of the most Ukrainian-speaking regions of the country — speaks perfect Russian. We communicate in Russian on a daily basis. Our deepest exchanges, our arguments, our tender moments, all happen in Russian. And believe me, when you argue with your wife, that is when you truly measure whether you have mastered a language or not!

The reverse is not true. If you learn Ukrainian and travel to Russia, Belarus, or Kazakhstan, nobody will understand you. It is mathematical, it is pragmatic, and it is not politics — it is common sense.

The argument that settles the debate: literature

Here is, for me, the most important point — and the one that transcends practical considerations. The greatest writers on planet Earth wrote their masterpieces in the Russian language. And when I say "the greatest," I am not exaggerating.

Leo Tolstoy — War and Peace, Anna Karenina. Literary cathedrals of unparalleled psychological depth. When you read Anna Karenina in Russian, you hear the rustle of St. Petersburg salons, you feel the stifling heat of the train carriage, you perceive nuances that the best English translation can never fully convey.

Fyodor Dostoevsky — Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot. The most dizzying exploration of the human soul ever committed to paper. In Russian, Raskolnikov's breathless rhythm, Prince Myshkin's feverish monologues take on a dimension that even the finest translations by Pevear and Volokhonsky can only approach.

Anton Chekhov — his short stories, his plays. The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters. Chekhov writes the way a surgeon operates — with a precision and economy of words that only reach their full measure in the original language.

Mikhail Bulgakov — The Master and Margarita. This brilliant novel, this hallucinatory satire of Soviet Moscow, is a linguistic feast. The wordplay, the double meanings, the biting irony — all of this is partially lost in translation.

And I could continue with Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Bunin, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Brodsky… Russian literature is one of humanity's most precious treasures. When you read these authors in the original, you are not reading "a translation of" — you are reading the work itself, as the author conceived it, with all the musicality, the intended ambiguities, the original breath.

I read War and Peace in Russian. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life. And I can assure you that no translation — however good — can render the full genius of Tolstoy.

And what about your relationship?

Let us not forget the essential point. You are reading this article because you are looking for a wife — not a language degree. And this is where everything comes together. The women registered with CQMI are not looking for a one-night stand. They are looking for a marriage, a lifelong union, a reliable, serious man ready to build something real. If you are not in that mindset, please move along.

For those women who are in this frame of mind — and they represent the vast majority of our members — the fact that you are making the effort to learn their language sends an extraordinarily powerful signal. It tells them, without words: "Your culture matters to me. Your world interests me. I am not just asking you to adapt to my universe — I am taking a step toward yours."

This is precisely why these Eastern European women choose a serious matchmaking agency over a random dating site. They want substance. They want a man who invests himself.

My wife Boryslava often says with a smile: "When Antoine spoke to me in Russian for the first time, I understood he was not a sentimental tourist." And she is right. Learning the language is proof through action that you are serious in your approach.

"Every marriage arranged through the CQMI agency has been with non-English-speaking Slavic women. My wife Boryslava did not speak French or English when we met. The Russian language was our bridge."
— Antoine Monnier, founder of CQMI

My conclusion: learn Russian

You have understood — my answer is clear and I stand behind it: learn the Russian language.

Not because Ukrainian is worthless — it is a magnificent language with a rich and painful history. But because Russian gives you access to a population pool six to seven times larger, to one of the world's greatest literary traditions, to the ability to communicate in some twenty countries, and — crucially — to understanding virtually every Ukrainian woman you will ever meet.

If later your wife turns out to be a proud Ukrainian from Lviv who insists on speaking Ukrainian at home — after mastering Russian, the transition to Ukrainian will be infinitely easier. The two languages are closely related, like Spanish and Italian. The reverse path would be far more difficult.

To go further on this topic, I invite you to read our article on the subtle difference between a Russian woman and a Ukrainian woman. And if you want to understand why learning Russian is essential before meeting Slavic women, you can read our earlier article in French on whether you should learn Russian to meet a Russian or Ukrainian woman.

Questions? Feel free to write to me directly: antoine@cqmi.ca

Antoine Monnier
Founder of CQMI Matchmaking Agency — Meeting Ukrainian and Russian Women