“Long overdue”
Baerbock announces new spelling for Kyiv
February 24, 2024, 9:04 p.m
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For Ukraine it is a “small detail” in the fight for “historical justice”: the federal government will write “Kyiv” instead of “Kiev” in the future, as Foreign Minister Baerbock announced during a visit to Odessa. The Ukrainian government also wants a change for the port city.
The federal government is changing the spelling of the Ukrainian capital in its official language: in the future we will no longer talk about Kiev – but about Kyiv. “We have completed what was long overdue: the spelling of your capital in the Ukrainian language,” said Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at a press conference with her colleague Dmytro Kuleba in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa.
Ukraine had long been asking for a change in the German spelling to be closer to the Ukrainian name of the capital. According to the Ukrainian interpretation, the spelling “Kiev” is too similar to the Russian language.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister thanked for the new language. “We have fought for many years to ensure that Ukraine is not viewed through the Russian language,” Kuleba said. “I would like to thank everyone who fights for historical justice – even in small details.”
However, there is still a linguistic disagreement between Germany and Ukraine on another point. Kuleba asked his colleague to have the name of the port city of Odessa spelled with just one “s” in the future – like in Ukrainian. Baerbock replied that the “devil is in the details”. “With just one ‘s’ we would pronounce it differently in Germany,” she pointed out – namely with a long “e”. The minister summed up: “We have to discuss this further.”