Ukrainian and Russian are not the same language.

Something people aren't aware of, but Ukrainian and Russian are not the same language. Infact, they are fairly different languages. Both are spoken in Ukraine, and most Ukrainians know both languages to some extent, but they aren't necessarily the same. In fact, Ukrainian shares more vocabulary with Polish than Russian.

Just as an example:

Red in Ukrainian is червоний and in Russian it is красный. In Polish it is czerwony (pronounced very similar to the Ukrainian).

The months in Ukrainian are also completely different than they are in Russian. But very similar to what they are in Polish. Russian months come from Latin. But Ukrainian months are much more poetic and are based on the representations for each month. For example November is Листопад derived from leaves falling.

And while they both are in Cyrillic, they have different alphabets. This has taken on special significance in the war with Ukrainian partisans using ї as a symbol of resistance (ї is not in the Russian alphabet).