I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m not trying to imply that coverage of Ukraine prior to 2022 didn’t have a pro-Western and (especially after 2014) anti-Russian bias (indeed a lot of these sources have a bit of that in them), but things were definitely reported on and certainly were reported on in a way that they probably wouldn’t be in the current political climate. (Also yeah a fair bit of this isn’t actually US news so sorry for that I kinda didn’t want to spend more time on this than I already did, but as far as I know these are at least all fully lib-approved Western sources).

banning Russian nationwide

Well that one probably wasn’t reported on because it didn’t happen, but you can find stuff on the things that did, like Lviv banning Russian in 2018 (article even mentions Ukraine planning to repeal a law protecting linguistic minorities in 2014), Poroshenko making Ukrainian mandatory as the main language in schools above a certain age and fully overturning the law just mentioned in 2017, mandating the knowledge of Ukrainian and its use in official settings as well as that it make up a majority of media (including mentions of UN condemnation of these language laws), Lviv declaring 2019 the ‘year of Bandera’, far-right anti-Russian violence as well as the Lviv government trying to ban Russian media in 2000, more anti-Russian protests against law giving minority languages better protections in 2012, Ukraine banning Russian-language national-level broadcasts in 2004, Nazi summer camps for children, more stuff about Azov and other far-right groups (sometimes with mentions of wider support among parts of the population, government, military, etc., war crimes, or their role in the Maidan revolution) [1][2][3][4][5][6][6][7][8][9], and much more.

I don’t believe any broadcast networks have covered Nuland’s leaked phone call either

BBC The Guardian PBS NPR

I never saw them mention the persecution ([…] or the shelling etc.)

NBC in 2015 (also makes mention of a number of measures the Ukrainian govt took that harmed people in Donbas during the conflict) CNN in 2016 The Guardian in 2014 BBC in 2016 CBC in 2015