Uzbekistan’s continuing reluctance to join the Eurasian Economic Union highlights the Central Asian nation’s preference to keep Russia at arm’s length. At the same time, deep economic ties – including a growing Uzbek dependency on Russian natural gas, and Russia’s status as Uzbekistan’s largest export market – mean that Tashkent cannot afford to alienate the Kremlin.

A similar dynamic is evident in debates over language. Last fall, Uzbek officials brushed off Russian complaints about an incident in which a teacher physically abused a student who asked the instructor to switch speaking from Uzbek to Russian. Now, another Uzbek-Russian language incident in Tashkent has local social media buzzing. But this episode is prompting a much different response from Uzbek officials, who seem intent on dodging a fresh tangle with Russia.

Baristas at a hip Tashkent coffee shop were brewing controversy when they repeatedly addressed an Uzbek food vlogger in Russian, reigniting a fight over the language’s use in Uzbekistan. When Khojiakbar Nosirov walked into a Bon! café, an employee asked him in Russian what he wanted to order, he recounted in an Instagram video, posted on April 2.

“A small cappuccino,” he responded in Russian. The employee then asked if he wanted to order anything else.

At that point, Nosirov, who goes by the moniker “Activist” online, switched to Uzbek to ask, “Ma’am, you’re Uzbek?” She indicated she was. “I’m also Uzbek. You see that, right? Why are you talking with me in Russian?”

Though the first worker did switch to Uzbek, later, other employees again addressed him in Russian, and Nosirov again requested they speak to him in Uzbek, he said in the video, reported by the Uzbek Gazeta newspaper.

“We’re in Uzbekistan, aren’t we? You see that you and I are Uzbeks, right? Speak with me in Uzbek. I’m not saying don’t speak in Russian at all,” he said he told the employees. A particularly prickly point raised by the video is Russian’s continued strong presence in the commercial sphere. Nosirov questioned why businesses should require their workers to speak Russian when most Uzbeks speak Uzbek.

The video quickly went viral and, in a few days, amassed 2.8 million views, 226,000 likes and 24,000 comments, the overwhelming majority supportive of Nosirov and critical of the use of Russian, Gazeta reported. Nosirov promoted the hashtag #özbekchagapir, or "#speakinuzbek," in a subsequent video, which also took off online.

“If you take out the emotion and aggression, the basic idea is that businesses need to make the official language a priority. And that’s correct,” linguist and government advisor Shahnoza Soatova wrote on Telegram.

The Bon! café chain, in a comment on Nosirov’s video, promised to look into the incident and take measures to ensure it does not happen again.

The controversy prompted a response from the Ministry of Justice, which, in a Russian-language Telegram post, noted that while advertising and consumer information must be in Uzbek, the law does not govern which language is used in personal conversations. The statement went on to indicate officials are in no mood for another language tiff over Russian, pointedly cautioning Nosirov, and, by extension, other language nationalists, not to stir up trouble.

“Ensuring inter-national harmony and tolerance, respect for the identity of each nation and people are among the most important directions of state policy in Uzbekistan,” the statement stressed. “Violation of the rights of citizens of Uzbekistan in the use of the language, or inciting conflicts on this basis, may entail responsibility [i.e. prosecution].”

Debates over the role of Russian flare over and over in Uzbek society between those who see it as a vestige of the colonial past, and those who believe it remains useful for business, education and inter-ethnic communication.

Russian lost official language status in Uzbekistan in 1995, and authorities have introduced extensive measures to promote the use of Uzbek. As a result, Russian’s use is much less widespread in Uzbekistan than in neighboring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Yet, Rossotrudnichestvo, Russia’s state-run cultural and humanitarian cooperation agency, estimates that about a third of the Uzbek population speaks Russian, Eurasianet reported in 2019. Russian remains the primary language for the ethnic Russian minority, which comprises about 2 percent of the Uzbek population, and some well-off Uzbeks in major cities.

The vlogger is no stranger to controversy. He gained fame in 2023 when he started his Activist videos looking into food safety around the capital and then spent 15 days in prison for a video in which he warned that some yogurts may not be halal, which a court considered extremist content.