Quote Originally Posted by Basil77 View Post
All these cities, exept Kiev are lmost 100% Russian-speaking. Kiev is about 50% Russian-speaking.
Do you know if the street signs etc are in Russian or Ukrainian or bilingual? I was planning to travel through some of these places.
A friend of mine was in Kiev a couple of years ago. She can understand very basic Russian but was surprised to find that all signs around town were in Ukrainian (which she could not understand at all), and street names had been changed from what was on the actual map she had, which was more or less new. She had some troubles getting around town as a result of this - and she had no luck asking for help in English. Her Russian was not good enough to understand complex explanations.

There is a risk I might end up having similar problems. I've had to put my Russian studies on ice since new years, work's been so hectic.