Ukrainian woman learns Lithuanian and teaches fellow Ukrainians
Sunday 25th October 2026 on 06:15 in
Lithuania
A Ukrainian woman who taught herself Lithuanian now teaches it to fellow Ukrainians in Panevėžys, where she manages a shop, LRT reports.
Sofija Bohush, 23, says she set herself the goal of learning the language after leaving Ukraine. She now handles customer enquiries and completes paperwork in Lithuanian, and spends her free time teaching compatriots.
Bohush hopes to bring one of her sisters from Kyiv to Lithuania. She says another difficult winter lies ahead in the Ukrainian capital, where Russian attacks on infrastructure could leave people without electricity and heating. Her sisters have visited her in Lithuania, including over the previous Christmas.
Originally from the village of Rusalivka in Ukraine’s Cherkasy region, Bohush grew up with three sisters and three brothers. After finishing school, she moved to Kyiv to study at Mykhailo Drahomanov University, intending to become a teacher of Ukrainian and English.
She left Ukraine shortly before Christmas in 2023 with two friends from Kyiv. Bohush said she was determined to learn Lithuanian and find work, but the language proved too difficult for her friends, who have since left Lithuania.
Her opportunity to work came after she met a lawyer who advised refugees and told her he planned to open a shop. Bohush said the job pushed her to learn faster. “I learned everything by speaking and asked people to explain every word to me in Lithuanian,” she said.
Although she also speaks Russian, Bohush said she does not want to use it. “I am ashamed to speak Russian, because everyone in my home region speaks Ukrainian,” she said. She was surprised by how widely Russian was spoken in Kyiv when she moved there to study, adding that Ukrainian was not popular in the capital before the war.
Bohush says she is pleased by compliments from people in Panevėžys about her progress, but is frustrated when fellow Ukrainians complain that Lithuanian is difficult. “It was very hard for me too,” she said. She has not decided whether Panevėžys will become her home or whether she will return to Ukraine. “I used to say I would never leave Ukraine, but things turned out differently, so now I hold back,” she said.