Essential Ukrainian phrases

'Good day.' Zaporizhzhia was a Russian-speaking industrial city and the shift to Ukrainian since 2022 has been real without being complete. Opening in Ukrainian is the right instinct and nobody will correct your grammar for trying.

'Thank you' and the reply. 'Прошу' also means 'here you are' and 'go ahead' — you will use all three at a counter in the same minute.

Air-raid alert. Zaporizhzhia is close enough to the front that alerts are frequent and warning times are short. 'Відбій тривоги' is the all-clear.

Shelter. There is no metro here, so shelters are marked basements, underpasses, school and institutional cellars and purpose-built rooms. Find the one nearest your flat and your office on the day you arrive.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, universally referred to by its initials. It sits about fifty kilometres away at Enerhodar, has been under Russian military control since March 2022 and is monitored by a permanent IAEA presence. Everyone here follows its status the way people elsewhere follow the weather.

Potassium iodide. Zaporizhzhia is the one city in this app where civil-defence guidance covers iodine prophylaxis, where tablets are distributed and where the instruction is clear: you take them only when the authorities say to, not pre-emptively and not because a rumour is circulating.

Curfew — 00:00 to 05:00 in the city and most of Zaporizhzhia district, but 21:00 to 06:00 in the Kushuhum community and in the controlled parts of Vasylivka and Polohy districts, by the oblast Defence Council's decision announced on 3 November 2025. The difference of three hours over a few kilometres is the local geography in one sentence.

Outage schedule. Rolling power cuts by queue ('черга') published a day ahead, plus emergency cuts with no notice. Ask which queue a flat is in before you sign anything.

'The bill, please.' Contactless works everywhere until the power goes — keep two or three thousand hryvnia in notes at home for the days the terminals and the ATMs are dark together.

The huge island in the middle of the Dnipro that the city is built around — the largest on the river, a national reserve, and the historic heartland of the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks. If you learn one local proper noun, learn this one.

'They came out from the occupation.' Zaporizhzhia is where people arriving from occupied Melitopol, Berdyansk and Enerhodar are received, so this phrase is said here in an ordinary voice, about neighbours and colleagues. Do not ask follow-up questions unless they offer.

'Enjoy your meal', said by waiters, colleagues and strangers. Answer 'дякую'.