Proceedings of the International scientific and practical conference ―Science and Society in Times of War‖ (June 5-7, 2026) / Publisher website: www.naukainfo.com. – Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2026. - 417 p.

183 institutions or municipalities, while bottom-up signs are produced by private individuals, companies, local communities, or civil society [3]. In times of conflict, the linguistic landscape becomes especially important. Wars, revolutions, regime changes, and border shifts often lead to the renaming of streets, the removal of monuments, the replacement of languages, and the appearance of new political slogans. Public space becomes a symbolic battlefield where competing historical narratives and political identities are represented. In the Ukrainian case, the war has given linguistic choices a particularly strong political meaning [4]. The use of Ukrainian in public space increasingly signals national unity and resistance, while Russian has become associated with the aggressor state and imperial domination [5]. This does not mean that language practices in Ukraine can be reduced to a simple Ukrainian–Russian opposition. The war has accelerated processes that had already begun after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and after the adoption of language legislation strengthening the position of Ukrainian as the state language. The growing visibility of Ukrainian. One of the most visible effects of the war is the increased presence of Ukrainian in public space. Ukrainian has become more dominant on official signs, public notices, institutional communication, commercial advertising, and patriotic banners. This development is connected both to language policy and to spontaneous social change. Before the full-scale invasion, many Ukrainian cities, especially in the south and east, still had a high proportion of Russian-language commercial signs, advertisements, informal notices, and everyday inscriptions. Since 2022, however, many businesses and institutions have switched to Ukrainian or have increased its visibility. This shift is not only administrative, but also symbolic. Choosing Ukrainian in public space has become a way of expressing solidarity with the state and distancing oneself from Russian political and cultural influence. The growing visibility of Ukrainian can be observed in several domains. Municipal announcements, public transport notices, safety instructions, school signs, cultural posters, and local government communication increasingly use Ukrainian as