When Ukrainian influencer Anna Tsukur started building her fitness guru business a few years ago, she made the choice to maximize her appeal by focusing on women, filming in inspiring places like Bali, and above all, speaking Russian.. That was then.

This is stated in the article The New York Times.

After Russia attacked Ukraine last year, Anna decided her first priority was to try to influence the war by encouraging her Russian followers to protest their country's actions.. Result: a flood of insults from Russians claiming that Ukraine is to blame.

Then Anna decided to ignore her business model.. She changed her language to Ukrainian, despite the fact that she realized that she would lose subscribers not only in Russia, but also in countries that were once part of the Soviet Union and where many people still speak Russian.

“I felt with all my heart,” she said, “that it was right to show that I support my people, Ukraine.”.

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Moscow's invasion created a cultural upheaval in Ukrainian society that paralleled the fighting. Monuments to Russian heroes were torn down or mutilated, and Russian writers, artists, and composers who served the Soviet education system for decades were subjected to a process called "

At the heart of this transformation is a language where more Ukrainians, most of whom understand both languages, are switching to Ukrainian. Transition started years earlier since independence but accelerated last year.

Like Anna Tsukur, thousands of influencers creating content on everything from children's games to beauty tips and science to comedy switched to Ukrainian from Russian after a full-blown invasion.. In many cases, suddenly, according to Vera Slivinskaya, senior head of AIR. Media-Tech, an international company founded by Ukrainians supporting online content creators.

Some have also drastically changed focus, abandoning their original themes for videos supporting the country's war effort..

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But a much bigger change was the change in language.

In Soviet times, Russian was the language of higher education and professionals in Ukraine, it was spoken by the urban elite. The Ukrainian language dominated many rural areas, but power and wealth were concentrated in the cities, so the attraction of the Russian language was obvious..

Even after Ukraine became independent in 1991, the Russian language remained widely spoken..

“It’s akin to a post-colonial situation where the Russian language was perceived as a sign of quality,” said Volodymyr Kulyk, a senior fellow at the Kuras Institute for Political and Ethnic Studies in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and an expert on language policy.. – Ukrainian was considered less modern and less well equipped for modern purposes”.

One of the clearest examples of a language transition is President Volodymyr Zelensky. Before becoming president in 2019, he built a career as a television comedian who broadcasts predominantly in Russian.. But campaigned for the presidency in Ukrainian.

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Language was also a problem during the war itself.. When Moscow seized Ukrainian territory, it pressured teachers to use Russian as a fundamental language in the classroom.. Some of those who joined were accused of collaborationism by the Ukrainian authorities, who have reclaimed much of the territory in recent months..

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the need to protect Russian speakers as part of his false justification for war.

For social media influencers, before the war, it made sense to use language that many saw as a cultural touchstone.. The Russian also immediately expanded her audience, given how many people know her in the former Soviet republics..

Therefore, the change in language had significant implications for the audience size of influencers.. This is important because for many of the most popular stars, audience ratings are key to brand deals, and in the case of YouTube, influencers can be paid based on their number of viewers..

An AIR Media-Tech analysis of 20 significant Ukrainian YouTube accounts showed that the total income of those who changed their language in 2022 decreased by an average of 24% compared to a year earlier.

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Between March last year and March this year, total views for language changers also dropped 24%, largely due to lower views in Russia and other former Soviet republics, the company said..

Anna Tsukur said she has lost more than half of her business since the start of the full-scale invasion, not only because she changed the language, but also because some Ukrainian women could not afford the fees for her online courses or were distracted by the war and.

She now has 149k followers on Facebook, over 84k followers on Instagram and over 58k followers on YouTube..

However, the war has given many social media faces a new purpose - and in some cases a wider audience..

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Before the invasion, Pavel Vyshebaba was an environmental activist whose YouTube videos sometimes received as little as 300 views, according to Slivinskaya.. From that time on, he joined the army and began making videos of his experiences on the front lines.. Now he has 94 thousand subscribers on YouTube and 131 thousand subscribers on Instagram.

Alexander Pedan, 41, experienced a different evolution. He was one of Ukraine's top TV stars with a well-known name before embarking on a career in social media.. He said a typical YouTube episode of the conflict included him hosting late-night games like Mafia played with other glamor influencers..

When the war started, he switched to the Ukrainian language and began to create content dedicated to the volunteer activities of the country. He also visited soldiers on the front lines to make a video and also made a video to help students displaced by the conflict find new universities.. One of his most successful videos, he says, compares life in the southeastern city of Mariupol before and after it was devastated by the Russian blockade last spring..

Pedan said his audience and revenue dropped when the full-blown invasion began.. But he believed that he had to respond to the gravity of the national situation.. Now he has 647k followers on Instagram.

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For the Ukrainian humorist Alexei Durnev, the war brought with it a particularly cruel irony.. He grew up in Mariupol speaking Russian and was deeply into Russian pop culture and hip hop.. So it's only natural that when he started making weird, irreverent YouTube videos, he chose Russian..

“Then we thought that Ukraine needed to be closer to Russia,” he said.. “Everyone in our region thought so.”.

In one video, he sits in his kitchen in Kyiv with Russian comedian Eldar Dzharakhov and together they make fun of Instagram store cuts made by other social media stars.. Since the beginning of the war, 36-year-old Durnev has blocked everything Russian on social networks.. Earlier this year, he says, he saw a YouTube video of Dzharakhov sharing the stage at a rally in Moscow with Putin..

Now Durnev speaks exclusively in Ukrainian in his videos - he has 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube and just under 1 million subscribers on Instagram. Typical content is still comedy, but with a taste of war.

In one, he compares the food rations consumed by Ukrainian soldiers with those given to Russian troops.. His conclusion? Moscow rations are so bad that Russian soldiers can die from food alone.

Like others on social media, he said the change in language and content over the past 14 months has been amazing but necessary in the end..

“Ukrainians needed a trigger to make us think about who we are, about our culture, mission and language,” he said.. “But it’s a pity that we pay such a high price for this.”.