This article examines the long-term linguistic impact of East Slavic migration on the languages of Europe, tracing its evolution from early medieval mobility to contemporary migration waves associated with post-Soviet transformation and the geopolitical reconfiguration of the 2000s–2020s. Drawing on historical sources, comparative linguistics, and sociolinguistic analysis, the study argues that the demographic expansion of Russian-, Ukrainian-, and Belarusian-speaking populations has become a structural factor in shaping Europe’s modern linguistic ecology. The article demonstrates that East Slavic linguistic influence extends beyond isolated diaspora communities and manifests through sustained mechanisms of language contact, including lexical borrowing, syntactic interference, discourse-level calquing, and phonetic accommodation in multilingual urban environments. Particular attention is given to the role of post-1991 migration, the 2014 and 2022 Ukrainian displacement, and the Belarusian political diaspora in accelerating bidirectional linguistic permeability between Slavic and Western European languages. The study situates these developments within a broader historical continuum, highlighting earlier phases of East Slavic presence in Europe—from medieval trade and religious networks to twentieth-century émigré communities—and shows how contemporary migration has intensified patterns of multilingualism already latent in European linguistic history. Finally, the article frames East Slavic languages as emerging instruments of cultural presence and soft power, whose influence increasingly intersects with European integration, education systems, and public communication. The findings suggest that East Slavic linguistic impact should be understood not as a temporary migratory by-product but as a durable component of Europe’s twenty-first-century linguistic landscape.
Darya Spiridonov (Wed,) studied this question.