The National Bank of Ukraine wants to abandon the kopeck

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has proposed abandoning the kopeck as a “symbol of Moscow occupation” by replacing the name of the change coin with “step,” the regulator’s website says.

“Having studied the history of monetary circulation in Ukraine, we came to the irrefutable conclusion that such a name for a change coin as “kopeck” is in fact a symbol of the Moscow occupation”– stated in the message dated September 2.

The NBU plans to return “own identity” to Ukrainian coins by replacing the name of the smallest monetary unit with “step”. The regulator has developed proposals for legislative changes to implement this initiative. They involve making a number of changes to the country’s legislative acts.

The ratio between the kopeck and the step is planned to be set at 1:1. The regulator also intends to develop the design of the future coin and the procedure for introducing it into circulation, as well as the withdrawal of kopecks. It is reported that Ukrainians will not be forced to specifically exchange kopecks for steps; the coins will circulate in parallel.

Let us recall that the Ukrainian authorities have been pursuing a course of de-Russification of the country for several years now.

In 2015, a law on decommunization was adopted, aimed, in essence, at intensifying the fight against Russian and Soviet monuments. By the beginning of 2022, the authorities had demolished more than 2.5 thousand monuments, and also changed the names of more than 900 settlements and about 50 thousand streets.

In late October 2023, it was reported that the city of Novomoskovsk in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine could be renamed Novosamarsk as part of the de-Russification policy being pursued there.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking about the de-Russification of Ukraine, noted that the minds of many Ukrainian politicians are occupied by the idea of ​​expelling Russians. He emphasized that, according to Kyiv’s logic, de-Russification means that ethnic Russians should have neither their own language, nor their own identity, nor history in this country.