“Flashbacks from the USSR” and stress instead of unity: why the 2025 radio dictation ended in controversy
27 October 2025 17:16
On the Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language, Ukrainians took part in the Radio Dictation of National Unity for the 26th time. However, instead of uniting all those who care about the native word in Ukraine and abroad, the language flash mob set the participants at odds.
Komersant investigated why this happened.
Radio Dictation of National Unity 2025: What is known about it?
This year, the text for the National Unity Radio Dictation was written by Yevhenia Kuznetsova, author of Ask Miechka, Cooking in Sorrow, and The Ladder. It was called “We Must Live.” People’s Artist of Ukraine Natalia Sumska read it for the audience.
In general, Ukrainians liked Kuznetsova’s text. People say that the dictation “highlighted” urgent problems and conveyed the realities of today’s life in the artistic word, in which the whole country lives.
However, some of the words that appeared in the text seemed difficult to the participants of the radio dictation because of their rare use in everyday speech. In particular, Ukrainians were “driven into a dead end”:
- dresses with storks;
- mezhyarya;
- dopiru
- pityatko
- cues;
- stooped;
- gnawing.
Kuznetsova herself commented on the event with humor:
“The radio dictation really unites…! “Now everyone is united by the idea that it was hard to read and what kind of words they are, and when the text is published, everyone will unite under the slogan ‘Why the comma? This is a dictate of national unity. You were warned!” the writer wrote.
From Sumska’s sister to the Minister of Education and a travesty diva: who wrote the dictation in 2025
Thousands of people in Ukraine and abroad took part in the radio dictation on the Day of National Writing and Language. Ordinary Ukrainians, politicians, diplomats, writers, actors, and public figures joined the flash mob.
Even Natalia Sumska’s sister, actress Olga Sumska, took part in the language campaign.
She joined the all-Ukrainian dictation from Ukrainian Radio. “Thank you for the interesting text, real-life, about the present… Chytkynia is the voice of my childhood,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
MP Iryna Gerashchenko also shared her impressions of this year’s dictation of national unity. She noted that the text was quite easy. But she would have liked the reading to be slower.
“At the dictation, I remembered the journalistic cursive, when you transcribe for a counterpart, but you can’t cut it down. But that’s all secondary,” Gerashchenko wrote on her Telegram channel.
She added that the Minister of Education of Ukraine Oksen Lisovyi and Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine Natalie Tsmoc also wrote the radio dictation with her.
Singer Arsen Mirzoyan, singer and TV presenter Anzhelika Rudnytska, and travesty diva Monroe also joined the action.
“A huge disappointment” and “stupid text”: why the unity dictation set Ukrainians at odds
While Ukrainians criticized last year’s dictation for its content, this year they expressed the most complaints about the manner in which it was read, criticizing Natalia Sumska.
Viktor Shlinchak, the head of the editorial board of the Apostrophe media outlet, was critical of this year’s language initiative.
For the first time in ten years, he quit writing the National Unity Dictation because of the reader. Natalia Sumska, at first, drove me so fast that I wanted to say the Usikovian “Don’t push the horses!”. And then she just mixed up the sentences: she started with one and ended with the previous one,” he shared his impressions.
Iryna Kliuchkovska, director of the International Institute for Education, Culture and Diaspora Relations, was also dissatisfied and noted that:
“This year is a huge disappointment. I wanted to write a beautiful text by a young talented writer so badly! But no, it was almost impossible! The wonderful actress Natalia Sumska was completely unprepared! She had obviously never written a dictation of national unity. She read like an artistic text from the stage for the audience, not dictated.
On social media, the participants of the radio dictation also shared their not-so-great impressions:
- “The text is very interesting, great for dictation. But I was a little bit confused about the speed. I didn’t finish the first sentence. In general, why do they hire an actress to dictate and not a teacher with experience?
- Ms. Natalia seemed to be in a hurry. We didn’t read the whole text from the beginning. The first sentence had not yet been finished, and the second was already being read.
- The three fastest things in the world: a cheetah, the speed of light, and Natalia Sumska reading a radio dictation.
- I wish that the meeting at the Armed Forces would be closed as quickly as Sumska read the dictation today.
- I’m ready to write a petition to Suspilne TV so that next time the dictation is read by teachers. Finally, at least have a teacher of the year!
- I thought that the traditional writing of the national unity radio dictation would be a pleasant challenge, as always. It turned out to be an unpleasant stress. It was unrealistic to write at that pace, even after the remarks of the host Natalia Sumska.
- “Dictation… written… my hand falls off, my heart jumps out… stress is wild… thanks to Ms. Natalia Sumska… If you don’t know how to read, ma’am, don’t take it.
Comedian Taras Stadnytsky also expressed his opinion on the unity dictation. He even recalled his school teacher of the Ukrainian language.
During the radio dictation, we can broadcast from the Arctic, which is really cool.
But we still can’t choose the optimal reading pace, which is really important for the thousands of people who wrote it. Our teacher of Ukrainian language and literature, Maria Vasylivna, watched the students who wrote the dictation during the dictation, and only when the latter looked up at her in anticipation did she continue to read the next sentence,” Stadnytskyi said.
In turn, writer Tetiana Vlasova spoke in defense of Sumska.
“In fact, I would like to support Ms. Sumska now. I think she herself understands that today’s dictation was not successful, so I would like to ask everyone not to aggravate and not to bring it to the point of negativity. We are not writing the Radio Dictation of National Unity to get upset and quarrel. Today, millions of people wrote in Ukrainian at the same time, and that’s the main thing,” Vlasova said in her social media post.
Oksana Yablonska, a Ukrainian scholar, poet, and public figure, expressed a similar opinion.
“Friends, Natalka Sumskaya is not guilty. Last time, Andrukhovych failed to cope with the reading. So let’s develop the skill of reading aloud,” she wrote.
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“Flashbacks from the USSR”: organizers of the radio dictation got into a scandal
Suspilne journalists asked the perennial winner of the language flash mob , Khrystyna Hoyaniuk, to share her opinion on this year’s dictation. The woman, like many Ukrainians, expressed critical remarks:
“I’m even afraid to say a word, lest I say it too badly. In 26 years, this is the first dictation that has taken me by surprise. First of all, it was not well read. The text itself is stupid. I don’t know if Pavlo Vyshebaba, who dictated last year, would have read better. At least he was able to write all the punctuation marks,” Goyaniuk said during the live broadcast.
After these words, the woman was cut off from the live broadcast.
This incident also did not go unnoticed by the public. Media personality Mariana Piecukh criticized her colleagues, calling the situation a “flashback from the USSR.”
There are so many people, so many opinions. But it’s not okay to interrupt the program because a person is criticizing. It’s like a flashback to the USSR. Because someone decided that it should be a kind of continuous pathetic hurrah-patriotic broadcast. This is how you can turn the tradition of dictation into mothballs,” the journalist wrote.
The All-Ukrainian Radio Dictation of National Unity was launched by the Ukrainian Radio team in 2000. Since then, it has been held annually, and the dictation itself has become the largest Ukrainian-language flash mob that unites Ukrainians around the world.
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