I don't wanna be rude but ilia seems a little bit illiterate 😭? Idk it's probably bc he's bilingual but he can't speak English well and (allegedly) can't speak Russian well either so there's no language that he is is actually fluent in ☹️ like yeah we can say he communicates through his art form of skating but like,, he functionally can't verbalize his own thoughts and feelings and that sounds so lonely?!? Part of the reason his mental health might be so bad is because he doesn't have the words to describe how he feels :(
Ok omg anon you have no idea how much I laughed when I received this ask, you are RUTHLESS hahshhs Now I will answer because it does seem like this ask originates from a genuine wonder and not from hate.
I see where you're coming from — there's a heinous amount of videos of Ilia not knowing how to speak during interviews, or just jumbling up words and hoping for the best. I fear that's a him thing though, not being illiterate. I'll give you a few reasons which, in my opinion, explain a bit of this, and you'll tell me if you're convinced !
He's pr-pilled. Like every athlete who has a huge spotlight over them, they get through pr-training and all kind of go through the same process : the answers become repetitive, they're very vague not to cause any drama, they try to be as emotion and opinion-less as possible. Basically, his interviews have become more and more blank because of this pr-training — you'll notice how he's always using the same sentences, always talking about the same subjects, redirecting the questions in one way, etc. That's just how it is, pr is the death of expression and opinion, but people are so quick to bash him for anything he says that he kind of HAS to go along with it.
He's extremely camera-shy. I'm not kidding, he is absolutely incapable of speaking through an interview without the most cringe-worthy, awkward moment of a lifetime. That's just how he is, he's terribly ill at ease and everyone suffers second-hand embarrassment – that's part of the charm to me. That doesn't help his case either.
The videos of him speaking grammatically incorrect Russian are old : he's 12-13 in almost all of them. Watch any recent vid of him speaking Russian and you'll notice he's made huge progress. Many Russian-speaking athletes have said they prefer talking in Russian with him if they can, so obviously he understands and speaks the langage fairly easily. As for English, he is fluent in it since he was born in Fairfax Virginia – that's like, his mother tongue. That doesn't stop him from making mistakes here and there when giving interviews : I'm a french teacher and the kids in my class have learnt the language their whole life; do they still make a ridiculous amount of errors ? yes. Is it normal ? Yes to that too, that's just how it is, speaking a language with total ease is less common than we think.
Now, there's this wonderful interview of him where he talks about his writing, poetry and how he wants to articulate it into a skating program (which he did with « A Voice ») that I totally recommend watching – that's the most earnest and open he's been in an interview in quite some time. Speaking of earnest, the very first interviews after his free-skate at the Olympics are pretty raw too : he's perfectly articulate, and without the pr-veil, you'll find that words blooms as he speaks.
So yeah, he is more than perfectly able to verbalise how he feels wether it's in his native English or learnt Russian, I think the issue lies somewhere else, namely, the pr-barrier, the camera-shyness and the desire to stay true to a « script » that he is being more and more confined too as his popularity rises.
Also, I think he just throws words around sometimes and just waits for us to pick them up and put them back in order hahshs I'm not saying he's extremely eloquent because that would be a BIG lie, but he surely is not illiterate — if anything, I think it's quite the opposite.
