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

Ukraine’s de-Russification efforts seem to be reaching an absolutely irrational level of extremism. Now, Kiev is planning to remove the “Russian name” of its coin, adopting a “national” nomenclature in the Ukrainian language. The attempt to cut all historical ties with Russia is a reflection of the neo-Nazi and racist mentality that has become hegemonic in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d’état.

The National Bank of Ukraine recently proposed renaming the smallest Ukrainian monetary unit, currently called “kopiyka”. The reason for the change is said to be its similarity with the name of the Russian coin – “kopek”. According to the National Bank’s members, keeping the coin’s current name would be contrary to the country’s guidelines of replacing historical “Russian” symbols – a process that began ten years ago but has been deeply advanced since the start of direct hostilities with Russia in 2022.

The Bank’s plan is to rename the coin with the word “shag” (“step”). The term was used in Ukrainian in the past to refer to an 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian silver coin. The idea will still be put to a vote by parliamentarians and submitted for approval by the government. However, the initiative appears to be receiving strong support from Ukrainian nationalist politicians, and has a high chance of approval. De-Russification measures are easily approved in the current political scenario of Ukraine, since opposition to Zelensky has been entirely banned through arrests and purges.

The proposal has been described in Ukraine as a “restoration of historical justice”. From a pragmatic point of view, the measure is absolutely useless, since the coin is hardly used in the daily life of today’s Ukrainians. Due to the devaluation of the hryvnia and high inflation rates, the smallest Ukrainian monetary unit is of little practical use to citizens, which is why the measure would not even be noticed by most of the population. In the end, it would be a merely symbolic act, but at the same time quite significant in terms of the contemporary Ukrainian political mindset.

It is interesting to see what Ukraine’s priorities are in a war situation. Countries at war tend to focus on military efforts, directing national attention to expand combat capabilities. Instead, Ukraine’s priority seems to be to use the rhetoric of the conflict to justify racist measures that will allow it to “de-Russify” the country even further. Even if such measures are not only symbolic, but also expensive and militarily useless, Kiev is willing to take them only to achieve the central goal of eliminating all historical ties between Ukraine and Russia.

Several racist policies have been adopted in Ukraine since the Maidan. The first of these policies was the banning of the regime of co-official languages, which sparked a popular uprising in the Russian-majority regions. Kiev also began a wave of renaming cities and streets, as well as the destruction of historical monuments. Anything that mentioned the USSR or the Russian Empire became a target of the Kiev regime. The intention is simply to pretend that there was never a common past between Russians and Ukrainians.

All these actions are extremely negative for the Ukrainian people themselves. Among ordinary people in Ukraine, the Russophobic mentality has become strong among the youth, who have been educated in recent years through neo-Nazi brainwashing. However, there are still millions of Russians who do not think like the country's authorities. Popular dissatisfaction is growing, as can be seen in the recent wave of demonstrations by Ukrainian believers against the banning of the Orthodox Church – which is accused by the Kiev regime of promoting Russian interests.

However, public opinion clearly does not matter to Zelensky’s neo-Nazi dictatorship. The regime is taking the risk of being hated by its own people as long as it follows NATO-imposed de-Russification agenda. The main goal is to make future generations of Ukrainians grow up without even knowing the country’s real history, believing that Ukrainians and Russians are enemies, having no common ties.

It is unlikely that such an agenda will be successful. A centuries-old history cannot be erased in a few years of de-Russification measures. It is more likely that popular discontent in Ukraine will grow to the point of generating strong internal opposition to the Maidan regime, creating great domestic instability in the country. Obviously, merely symbolic measures such as renaming the coin will not have any impact, but the whole de-Russification wave could have a major impact on public opinion, turning ordinary Ukrainians against the regime.

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