Free Ukrainian learning resources
19 free resources, checked and categorised.
Every link is usable without paying. Some ask for a free account or keep extras behind a paid tier, and those are labelled.
Ukrainian shares the Slavic difficulties (seven cases, three genders, verb aspect) but the free material has grown a great deal recently and now covers beginners well. Cyrillic takes a few days; the cases take months. That ratio is worth planning around.
A structured course matters here more than shopping for the perfect one, because the grammar interlocks and a self-assembled path tends to leave holes. Keep a dictionary that shows full declensions, since the form you hear is often not the form you would look up.
If you have studied Russian, expect real transfer in vocabulary and structure alongside genuine false friends. Treat it as a related language rather than a dialect: the differences in pronunciation and everyday vocabulary are substantial, and assuming otherwise builds errors that are slow to remove.
A realistic first year: the alphabet in a week, a course over several months, then a long consolidation period where the cases stop requiring conscious thought. Ukrainian free material has expanded quickly and now covers beginners well, though it remains thinner than for the major Western European languages, so finishing one good course matters more than sampling several.
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Blog post listing 100+ basic Ukrainian phrases with Cyrillic and transliterations, grouped by greetings, introductions, directions, food, help, and goodbyes
A 1,000-word Ukrainian vocabulary list with English meanings, meant for reading and memorizing common words
YouTube video channel with street interviews about Ukrainian language and culture, giving learners spoken examples and listening practice
Free 100-lesson MP3 Ukrainian course with textbook support, native-speaker dialogues, and phrase-based lessons for everyday situations
Free Ukrainian vocabulary list with audio for describing people, covering common words like man, woman, boy, girl, child, and elderly person
Interactive self-access Ukrainian reading course for beginners, with units on alphabet, transliteration, grammar, and graded reading practice through texts and mini-dictionaries
YouTube channel with Ukrainian video lessons, dialogues, podcasts, and cultural clips covering grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and everyday conversation
YouTube video lessons from beginner to advanced Ukrainian, with individual Skype or Zoom lessons mentioned in the channel description
Podcast-based Ukrainian course with five seasons of lessons for different levels, plus 60 short conversation mini-lessons, books, transcripts, flashcards, and extra exercises
Phrase course in Ukrainian with many common daily expressions, plus links to grammar, vocabulary, reading, audio, and other lesson pages
Ukrainian lessons site with beginner to advanced courses, adapted reading and listening exercises, plus grammar, vocabulary, and writing practice
Ukrainian news site with current articles, analysis, interviews, columns, podcasts, and archives; read headlines and sections across politics, economy, war, and society
Alphabetical directory of Ukrainian online newspapers, with links to outlets by city or region and language for reading current news sites
Online Ukrainian dictionary and spelling reference with 130,000+ definitions, 260,000 word forms, transliteration, stress marking, and grammar-style help
Live online radio stream of Ukrainian hit music, with current and recent track listings and links to related stations and a morning-show podcast
Learn it there, practise it here
Free resources are great for input: reading, listening, explanations. They are weaker at the two things that actually move you forward: speaking Ukrainian out loud, and remembering what you met once. That is what OwnSlides is for.
Say it out loud
Talk to an AI tutor that answers back, or get matched with other learners and native speakers for a text chat.
Practise what you read
Turn a grammar point or article into exercises, so it moves from recognised to usable.
Keep the words
Save new words to My Words and let spaced repetition bring them back before you forget them.
This directory began from a community-built list of free language resources, a year of collecting and checking by Joanna (u/chlebka) and dozens of contributors who suggested links, shared freely. See the original list. We have since expanded, re-checked and re-categorised it, and we keep the per-resource credits where the original list recorded them.